


Drain Your Cities to the Sea

by discountghost



Series: Heartlines [1]
Category: ATEEZ (Band), K-pop
Genre: Eventual Smut, Gore, M/M, Not Beta Read, Siren!San, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Character Death, cawllection, cryptozoologist!hongjoong, does it count if he’s a siren, i learned some interesting things about sharks while planning this, mer may, the others are kinda there, there’s a lot I’m sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discountghost/pseuds/discountghost
Summary: Something’s in the water.—In which Hongjoong is a cryptozoologist given a chance to finally make the world know what he knows: that we’re not alone out in the water.





	1. Oh, The River, Oh, The River

The smudges of brown and green in the window passed by quickly. Nothing more than a blur of landscape as the car moved along the road. Well, it was more a truck than a car, but his speciality wasn’t automobiles and vehicles. He could hardly tell, though, too preoccupied by the buzz of his thoughts. This was really happening. He was really  _ here _ . Or on his way, at least. For all intents and purposes, winning that grant was a miracle. Hongjoong couldn’t stress that enough to himself as his legs bounced on the seat in the quiet car. 

Quiet because the driver and he had tried conversation, but Joong could only take so much. It had to have been because he’d used the same name he’d gone through school with,  _ Henry Kim _ . He figured the older man had been expecting someone else the way his smile dropped when he first saw him at the airport. He could still feel the man eyeing his ears as if they were some sort of oddity, the earrings on cartilage catching the light between the clouds. But he hadn’t said anything, not really, and Joong figures that’s another miracle because he doesn’t want to get into an argument less than a day in town. He  _ needs _ this, assumed prejudices be damned.

( _ He watched the man’s smile drop like he’d been punched in the gut. The gnarled lines of his face were pulled into a scowl. He’s got the classic flannel shirt over a plain undershirt and cargo pants that reminds him of an old fishing grandpa. He doesn’t think this man is an old fishing grandpa, not with the history of his town. _

_ “You Henry?” _

_ “Hongjoong, yes. Henry was just what I used in school and it stuck professionally.” _

_There’s nothing more than a grunt given as an answer and the narrowing of eyes. The man pulls his hat down, hiding a few gray hairs that have managed to come loose before he turns away. He doesn’t pursue it_ _as the man loads the luggage he’s brought along with him. Or that the man doesn’t introduce himself. But there’s a sticker on his shirt that identifies that he’s with the grant organization and that can only hope to serve as enough for now._ )

The town pulled up suddenly, like it appeared out of nowhere. The greenery gave way to tired old buildings cuddling sleek new ones, shiny and tacked with signs for something overpriced being sold inside. It set him thrumming with more anticipation, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. There was the familiarity to it that he could appreciate but not quite name. He leaned forward, close enough that he felt his head press against the glass with each bump in the road. It felt slow but moved fast and all too soon they were thrown back to the wilds of greens and browns. His heart hammered away at his chest as the road turned to rock and dirt and sticks on a trail forcibly forgotten. They didn’t come down this way often, he’d been told in an email. That it was just bad luck to be out this far and it was a wonder this cabin was even still being cared for. It really was a wonder. It wasn’t long before they reached a point where they’d need to walk and Hongjoong was very certain he wasn’t dressed for a hike.

( _ “You always dress like that?” _

_ Joong looked down at himself, buckling in his seatbelt. It was nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt - okay, maybe the t-shirt was a little odd but it was classic. TLC had every right to be right there in the center of his shirt. His sneakers were doodled on and he could feel his earrings knock against his lobes and neck as he turned his head. Maybe he should have toned down the dangling. It also didn’t help that his choker looked a touch more like a collar than it needed it. _

_ “Huh?” _

_ “Your clothes. Do you need that many rips in your jeans?” _

_ “It’s a fashion statement.” _

_ Another grunt and the car rolls away from the airport. He was glad the other hadn’t mentioned his choker as he tapped a ringed finger on the door. _ )

He picked his way after the man, wiping the sweat starting at the base of his neck. It had been maybe fifteen minutes of walking, but the extra weight of his luggage was what made this whole thing more taxing. Hongjoong feared what walking his actual boxes of belongings would be like if this is what two suitcases did to him. The man glanced back at him, shaking his head a moment before continuing on. He didn’t ask if the younger man needed help.

It was another ten minutes that Joong was really regretting taking the offer for the cabin. The appeal of it had been its proximity to the water, which he would need for his research. But now he was close to forty-five minutes from the town and any other possible source of research. Maybe he should have taken up their offer to stay at the bed and breakfast but how much was he going to enjoy that for the next six months? It felt like he might have gotten tired of it real fast if this man’s attitude was anything to go by.

( _ “You’re a different sort.” _

_ “Thank you?” _

_ The man drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “We aren’t used to your sort, so…” _

_ “Thank you?” It’s another question, answered with a grunt. It’s the last time they speak in the car to one another. _ )

It was woodsy in the way that he expected to be. Time had not reached its clutches into the wooden frame, shining and pristine. Like the cabin had only just been built. The man pushed the door open, letting it swing wide as Hongjoong hobbled up the steps of the porch with his suitcases. The rush of water bounced into his ears and he turned his head to see the river ebb by, running over rocks and logs until it reached the swimming hole. The light reflected off its surface and it was still and calm in a way that Joong had only ever seen in a picture in one of those  _ Discovery _ magazines or a nature documentary. He found he was no longer envious of the people behind those lenses. It was his turn to take in the way the water gurgled as it moved and soon enough he might be able to tell how cold the water is. He’d really like that; the crooks of his elbows were collecting sweat and his pits were swampy. 

 

He heard a throat clearing, his attention tore from the water and moving on to the cabin. The man’s brows rose, taking in the smile on his lips. It’d grown wider; there was a burn in his cheeks he didn’t quite mind. He made it up the last of the steps, cheeks reddening slightly as he tripped over the last one. He stumbled foward, using the momentum of his rolling suitcases to catch himself.

 

The interior was nice; brighter than he expected. His answer for that was the large glass wall facing the river, with a clear view of swimming hole. They’d really set him up nice. A hand pushed his mouth closed, suitcases forgotten by the door as he stepped up to the plane of glass. There were blinds he could close, probably to give him privacy - though, if what they said was true, he wasn’t sure he needed them.

 

“You’re really a city kid, huh.”

 

Hongjoong blinked, remembering the man’s presence. His smile was soft and had he mistaken his tone for something like amusement? “Yeah, through and through.”

 

“You’ll have a hard time adjusting, but your fridge is stocked. The phones work, so if you need anything you just call up the number on the side; that’ll me and Mary’s. I think the grant folks contacted the library so you should be able to call direct.” Dee-rect. The man rocked on his heels a moment, as if trying to remember anything else. “My name’s Robert. And I wouldn’t advise going swimming in that water by yourself. Or at all. We got a pool in town if you’re feeling like you wanna swim.”

 

It was confirmation. They’d explained it before, the officials who’d approved his visit. No one goes in the water. Not alone, not unattended if they absolutely need to go in. Joong had already planned to make the library his first stop the second day of his arrival, dig up town archives on anything concerning the water.

 

“Thank you. For the drive, and the warning.”

 

Robert returned the smile. “No problem, kiddo. You’re a different sort, but you’re alright.”

 

Joong chuckled as the man stepped out, closing the door behind him. His attention returned to the glass window, peering up. It looked like it went all the way to the roof and when he looked to the left, he suspected it extended into what must have been the bedroom. Those blinds would be closed as often as possible. He didn’t see stairs that would indicate a second floor, so it must not have been a far way to go. The kitchen was right within sight, and there were two doors. No closet but a coat rack hanging on the wall. It was bare of most other decorations, but had a couch in front of a fireplace, a bookshelf barely stocked, and a table with enough seats and space for four people. Exploring the place would not take long. 

 

But first - he’d really like to find the bathroom to take a shower.

  
  


His first night in the cabin wasn’t bad. He’d passed out after getting out of the shower. He had to say the bed was softer than he’d expected and he was not disappointed by the sleep he got. His alarm went off and he managed to roll out of bed. Or, at least, that was before he really remembered where he was. Deluce, Connecticut; by a river that carried with a history of blood and gore.  _ The grant _ . So much for everything being a dream he would wake up from unfortunately and go back to his common life.

 

But that was not the case and that alone was what had him throwing off the covers. He wasn’t as daunted by the trek back toward the town, not when he called the library and they let him know a ride would be waiting for him where the road ended. The whole ride up had been comfortable, albeit with forced pleasantries that didn’t last them the whole ten minute drive. Hongjoong was assured that he’d be given a bike and he’d cycle himself into town when he was dropped off in front of the library.

 

That was five hours ago. His stomach gurgled quietly and a dull throb started in his temples from having sneezed as hard as he did for the last five minutes. Unearthing the archives had been like opening up a box full of dust. Which was basically what it was, and the risk wasn’t quite worth the reward.

 

Deaths involving the river really tapered off during the sixties. People had other means of dying accidentally and the public pool was built around then. There were the occasional articles about pretty young girls taking a dip and coming back with a finger missing; young studs in the decades who lost more than that for the sake of a dare. But never in the winter, never in the cold. That was just idiocy that did them in and they’d be fished out in the spring.

 

But before the sixties was vague as well. The names were on a loop. Price; Miller; Beckett; Smith; Price again. The ages jumped. One at sixteen, another at fifty. One as young as twelve, their older counterpart being somewhere in their seventies. It was breaking his theory and shaping a new one. But not without unsettling his stomach. Early papers had no problem being detailed about the gore.

 

His eyes danced over the words, burning them into his mind. “Price, aged 51, found missing internal organ and severe damage to torso and lower half. Face left untouched.” They’d thought it wise to rule it as an animal attack. That’s what each and every one of those were considered. He wondered if the police station would have reports of those that he could take a look at.

Hongjoong’s concentration was ruptured by the thud of another box being set down beside him. Another wave of dust hit and he cradled his face with the crook of his elbow to stifle a sneeze. His gaze went up to the unsympathetic young man that had dropped the box, a look of complete disillusionment clear on his face.

 

“I thought cryptozoology was supposed to be cool.”

 

“It is - it just - there’s a lot of reading.” Joong wasn’t embarrassed so much as tired of this. He’d explained this enough times to his parents. “But then you get to do things like travel to remote locations.”

 

“You’re right about remote locations.” A scoff followed and the boy was gone. 

 

Hongjoong sighed, staring over at the next box. It was probably all the town folktales he’d asked for. The stuff about the witch trials. As small as the town was, it had been right there in the trail of witch trials. There had been women and young girls drowned in that swimming hole. The one they hadn’t bothered renaming, stripping it of one just after the trials had ended. It was just The River and The Swimming Hole. It need nothing else to be known.

 

Lips pursed, he considered the prospect of another break to scarf down stale granola bars from the vending machines. They’d been his breakfast and his first break meal, and he was starting to get tired of them. The research, he could take with him. At least, he hoped he could. When he went up to the front desk with the box just barely in his grasp, the old woman at the desk looked alarmed. Or at least had the decency to do so. Everyone around here seemed to have muted reactions or saved it for when he wasn’t around.

 

And it was how he ended up across from Robert at a diner, scarfing down a banana nut pancake because breakfast “was always” according to the sign outside. The box had been dusted off before leaving the library and it was just after twelve when they’d sat down to order. The older man watched him eat with amusement clear on his face. He must have been hungrier than he’d original thought; betrayed by the vending machine granola bars.

 

“You know...as interesting as the river is, don’t ever go in.”

 

There was weight to those words, enough that they made the younger man look up. “Yes?”

 

“I said it before, but - don’t go in the water. You’ll hear it enough. Bad things happen when you do.”

 

“That might be a little hard, considering I need to know what’s  _ in _ it.” Hongjoong snorted, taking another bite of his pancake. His fork scraped against the plate and he frowned.

 

“That’s what kids used to say all the time. They went missing.” Robert’s face contorted a moment. “My son was one of them.”

 

Hongjoong just barely avoiding dowsing his jeans in scalding hot watered down coffee. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

 

“It was years ago. I gave him the same warning I’m giving you now.” Another contortion. He was starting to take those as signs of emotion. “I’m sure you’ve run into a lot missing people in your research so far.” A nod to the box in the seat beside him. “The water isn’t too kind to the people in this town. Hasn’t been for a very long time.”

 

“How - how long? The records go back, but only so far. I think the librarian said there had been damage to them at a certain point, but I haven’t checked this box to be sure.”

 

“Well, Henry, they won’t be in the records because there’s an evil that feeds in that water that’s been here for as long as we have.” He let his words sink in before he continued. Robert knew how to tell a story. “They used to use the water for the reason anything would go bad. Your husband was cheating? He was compelled by the water. Your wife was unruly? She was compelled by the water. And if someone had lost another person to the water, everyone knew and you were the pity of the town. This was when it was so frequent a thing, a funeral became what you kids call a block party. It was what filled the summers.

 

My grandmother had said that there was a year it got real bad. That that summer had been one of their hottest and it drove the teenagers crazy, my father included. She said that was what lead them to that damned water in the first place. She liked to curse that riverbed with every last part of her; would even spit before and after saying the word. She said the river drove them to dive on in and the river took them, too. That the evil in the water grabbed their legs and held them under until they stopped breathing. Over forty kids went in and only a baker’s dozen came out.  They said they’d never seen the river as red as it was that day. 

 

There are years when that swimming hole is so red you can’t see the bottom of it. It was the reddest it’d ever been that day and it was why they didn’t find the bodies until it’d cleared out. They’d been wrapped up in the weeds and held at the bottom until they rotted enough that the weeds loosened and they floated up to the surface. The other bodies were found faster, caught in the river before they could run their course to the sea. There was...very little left of them to find.”

 

He’d read about this. Or maybe some version of it. A tragedy: kids mutilated and drowned. Hongjoong could only look on as Robert continued.

 

“If my father had been one of those kids, I wouldn’t be here. So I’m telling you: stay out of that water.”

  
  


It’s a heavy thing, remembering the connection everyone has to the river. It’s enough to put him off for the rest of the day, weighed down by the questions and speculations. He went through the rest of his research in a haze. But several things remain on his mind. Why those names? Why those kids? Why? Why? 

 

Why?

 

Was it all part of feeding habits? A dietary restriction to meat? A man-eating race of aquatic creatures understandably would have some sort of meat-based diet, but again - this one was all over the place. There didn’t seem to be a target food source. Just whatever was dumb enough to get close. And it looked like that often ended up being teenagers unable to handle the heat. 

 

It was no wonder Robert was warning him to stay away.  _ He _ probably didn’t even know what lurked beneath the peaceful, rippling surface. Not many would; or at least they wouldn’t know what the right word for it was. He’d been studying them long enough to know that a siren was very different from a mermaid. Their only similarities truly lay in their death. But he’d never heard of one like this. This was more purposeful than the mindless violence they recreated. He’d theorized this for some time already, and for a siren to be behind this much death - there was something to it. He’d given up around seven, and the library was closing anyways. The box he’d toted around for much of the day was filling up with more on the town’s history than on any reports of missing persons or supposed animal attacks by the water.

 

He dropped the box beside the couch, padding up to the window on socked feet. There had been nothing more that he could find in the library and he didn’t want to spend all day cooped up. He still needed to start on the report for the day, as well; something he wasn’t quite a fan of. How was he going to put the tragedies of the deaths in a scientific way when he had to remember the connections they still had to living people? Hongjoong could understand the aversion from a topic like this. Man-eating fish people. It was the easiest way to describe what they were. Nothing like  _ The Little Mermaid _ ; it was based upon an entirely different species after all. Mermaids were softer, gentler; wouldn’t hurt a fly unless forced to it. Sirens were...they were something else. But he had to wonder - how violent a death had it been that the siren would act in this way?

 

He stared out at the water like it would give him answers. It gurgled on, but gave him nothing. 

  
  


It’s notably harder to do research when you’re cooped up for three days. Hongjoong wondered if the amount of rain that came pouring down was usual. On the first day, he’d decided that it would be a good chance to make us of the fireplace. He’d never done it before and might as well try it out. He’d sat too close and found himself much too warm too fast. But it was still pleasant. Once that was done, he’d fully unpacked since everything was still in his suitcases and he was supposed to be here a while. Six months. Half a year away from home like he’d always wanted for the sake of proving that what he thought existed was real. He’d dreamt about it for years, from that one moment in high school years ago. Well, not that long ago. It had been a battle to convince his parents to let him do this freely, but he relented until they gave in. And now he was where he wanted to be.

 

He was a mess of excitement all over again and he might have thrown open the blinds in his room to stare at the river drinking up the rain. It was like a thirsty beast, swelling with each drop and churning for more. Like it would never be quenched, even with the water from the path trickling down to it.

 

The second day was not much more eventful. In fact, it was beginning to wear on him, being stuck indoors. It pelted the ground, and when he peered out the window to the path that lead to the town, it was a river of its own. No getting out. Thunder split the sky with sound, a flash of lightning striking down somewhere. Not near, but he shuddered at the idea that the next one could be closer and he moved away from the window. 

 

Joong had only done a cursory examination of the research material left in the box. A couple censuses, obituaries, and missing person reports. He could phone into the library and see if there was anything on animal attacks that they might have. It’d be a good start; he’d noticed the pattern of what they were calling these incidences and they weren’t entirely far from the truth. But it made looking at these records a little harder.

 

The censuses proved to be useful. At least in letting him know just how busy the creature in the water had been. The town population wasn’t big, but that wasn’t unexpected. There’s only so much space out here. He can imagine that they were not too keen on expanding, not with the river as it was. But it was in the numbers and how they dipped. 

 

The water was a hungry beast that took and took. Sometimes it would be so many that the notes on the census would be smeared with tears, the ink blotted. The paper was weathered and old, probably from bad storage, but that only spoke more of the history behind and his stomach twisted like the river outside his window. He looked up at it a moment, jaw clenched. Hongjoong had come prepared, mentally, with the idea that the siren was no more malevolent than any other of its kind. That maybe it just had more opportunity than most and it capitalized. As far as he could tell, it was old enough to have regained some sentience.

 

Around mid afternoon, his eyes grew tired and he knew he needed a break. He fixed himself a sandwich, walking around the kitchen island to the know and decided that it wouldn’t be so bad if he gave Robert a call. The man probably had more stories that would fill in blanks he was drawing. It rang twice before a soft, airy voice answered with a “Hello?”

 

“Hi, this is - uh - Henry. Hongjoong? I’m staying at the cabin by the river.”

 

A pause, a soft gasp. “Oh, Hongjoong! It’s nice to hear you. I’m Mary.”

 

“Same to you.”

 

“What can I do for you, sweetie?”

 

“I was just - it’s kind of lonely up here. I just wanted to talk to someone.”

 

“Oh! We can just talk then.” Joong decided he liked Mary. She sounded like one of those grandmothers who sat in rocking chairs and knitted while telling you stories. “I imagine you can’t do much up there by your lonesome.”

 

“Yeah, it’s raining too hard for me to go out.”

 

“River’s filling up for its old tenant.”

 

An odd thing to say. “Hm?”

 

“It’s a big thing, what’s in that water. Everyone has been telling you to stay away from it, right?”

 

“Robert said to when I last spoke to him.” She laughed.

 

“Robert is too careful. He don’t know what I know.”

 

Even if she couldn’t see it, the smile on his face was relaxed. It was easier to talk to her than it had been with Robert at first. “Oh, yeah?”

 

“No one talks about it often. Too damn focused on the bad stuff. But there was a little girl that was saved from that water.”

 

“People pulled her out?”

 

“No, no. What lives in the water did.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He could hear a particularly loud creak of wood. She must have been getting up from her seat or something. He could pictured her fiddling with the chord on an ancient phone as she moved. “You see, there’s something in that water. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She doesn’t let him answer, just continues on. “I don’t know what to call it, but it lives in the water. It isn’t...all bad. It’s done us damage, but I don’t think it really means to.”

 

“You think?” Now it was his turn to fiddle with the phone, tucking it in the crook of his neck as he looked around for a sheet of paper. He had been right to call her up. He was getting somewhere. “And it saved the little girl?”

 

“Yes, it did. She went in - I remember it because there was so much talk - in her Sunday best. Family was there with some folks from out of town and they wanted to impress with a picnic. They heard the warning about the place and you’ve heard those stories about how out-of-towners don’t listen.” He felt his cheeks warm up and she laughed like she knew. “But they took them out to show them the water and she wandered off on her own. Current swept her right on up - right on up to the swimming hole. She couldn’t have been no more than eight, and most folks didn’t teach their kids to swim, lest they think it a bright idea to go practice in the river. Said she was under for almost two minutes before anyone noticed she was gone.

 

They’re panicked - that’s how it is in a thing like this. They think she’s lost in the woods somewhere. But when they find her, she’s at the river bank. Breathing but unconscious.”

 

“And you think something pulled her out of the water and saved her?”

 

“That little girl is alive and well and she swears up and down that there was something in that water that saved her.”

 

“Was she you?”

 

He can hear the smile in her voice. “It was my daughter.”

  
  


It was confusing. There was mostly death and dying associated with the river - and then Mary’s story. He’d talked with her a little bit longer before hanging up, staring down at his notes. She’d given him the date and time and description her daughter had passed onto her. It was a touching story - really, it felt like something out of a fairytale - but it didn’t fit. At least not with what Joong had in mind. It must be very old, the siren. He glanced out to the window.

 

Mary had said the river was filling for its tenant. That it was big; her daughter’s description matched it. Were there other witnesses that could say the same? He’d theorized that the siren had to be big for the sake of it compensating its tail. But for nature to be forced to comply to its size - rain so hard the river flooded in anticipation - felt more uncanny. That’s what this whole thing was: uncanny. And it fit the MO of a supernatural creature as far as he was concerned.

 

He swallowed, fiddled with his papers as he turned away from the scene of the river rushing by. 

 

The third day - and he was going stir crazy. Mary had given him something  _ good _ and he couldn’t even capitalize on it. Instead, he was stuck in his cabin with a river getting the final touches down for  _ something _ coming to occupy it. He considered giving her another call to ask more, but there was only so much he could provide him with. Hongjoong could probably focus his energy on setting up interviews and maybe seeing to the rest of his stuff that was supposed to arrive.

 

( _ The call to the bed and breakfast was painful. Torturous, at best. The storm made the connection staticy and that might have been why the woman on the phone was practically screaming at him. _

 

_ “You’re the monster hunter they sent, right?” _

 

_ “I’m not - I’m not a monster hunter.” _

 

_ “What?” _

 

_ “Hello?” _

 

_ “What!” _

 

_ “Hello?” He had to press a finger in his ear like he was somewhere loud. _

 

_ “Yes! Are you wanting your stuff?” _

 

_ “Is it there already?” _

 

_ “What?” _

 

_ “Are the boxes there?” _

 

_ “What!” _

 

_ “Boxes! Are they there?” _

 

_ “Just one! It’s got some weird little symbols on it so I assumed it was yours.” _

 

_ Right. Hwa must’ve written on it. The man’s paranoia was going to be the death of him. “That’s mine.” _

 

_ “What!” _

 

_ “It’s mine!” _

 

_ “Great!” There was a click and then the line went dead. It took him a moment to realize this, blinking before he set the phone back on the hook.  _ )

 

He supposed he could start drafting up a report to send to the grant organization. They had required that he try to keep contact with them as often as every week. Three - four, technically - days were already gone past, constrained to paper research against his wishes. He should make the most of his time while he could, because Lord only knows he was going to be running around once the rain let up.

 

On the fourth day, the rain stopped. He woke to the quiet - the natural kind of quiet that was devoid of cars and crazies in the middle of the street - and he felt a pressure lift from him.  _ Finally _ . He threw off his covers and he assumed his choice of attire would make Robert proud. Hongjoong had anticipated being out in the woods for a duration of his stay so not everything in his drawers were wildly inappropriate. His t-shirt was only a little meme-y and his jeans were rip free and somewhat loose. He tucked the hem of them into his boots (admittedly not meant for hiking but there wasn’t that much of a difference, was there?) and once he’d scarfed down breakfast, he set out with his camera.

 

He didn’t want to think of it as a calling. There weren’t any songs coming from the water that had him hellbent on getting there. Maybe it was because he’d loved the water to begin with. Water was a changing, fickle thing. He liked to think it was a person, and that even it had some not so stellar days. It was from the sea life came from, at any rate, and maybe that was what had been behind his obsession with the aquatic for so long. But - the River. Uppercase “r” because they couldn’t name it. Wouldn’t. Because there was power in a name.

 

It was a short walk to the river. It had swelled to twice its size, rushing on by with new vigor. The lazy crawl it had before was gone, as if it were excited about what was to come. It certainly looked deep enough to carry something in its depths. He could envision it, at least. A fin ripping through the water with ease as the creature headed for the swimming hole. Or would even this be big enough for it? Would the siren pull itself along, over rocks smoothed by years of the current running over it? Or would it be more of a seamless glide? 

 

He raised the camera up, one eye closed to focus more in the viewfinder. The picture was clear, the water angry and hurried and galloping towards the pregnant swimming hole it filled. He took a picture of that, too. If the river had gone up in size, so did it. Even at a distance, it looked imposing - but inviting. Cool waters beckoning him to come forward.  _ Click _ . Another picture saved. He could organize these all later.

 

It took less than ten minutes to get to the swimming hole. Maybe a little less if he’d stopped taking pictures and watching where he was going. The narrative of temptation was becoming clearer with each picture. The River and The Swimming Hole were beautiful. Rocks stacked in a natural chaos that made them almost too perfect for lounging on. Banks lined with pebbles so small and smooth they could be mistaken for sand. It hearkened to the sea, the water lapping up to the banks. The mud there was light and faded into those pebbles. 

 

Pictures of those, too, were taken. But he had to stop, staring out at the water churning as it shifted with the little current in the hole. Trees dipped into the water, shaking off their own dew and rain to contribute. As if it were payment for taking residence so close to the water. Mesmerizing was a good word for what this all looked like.

 

Clouds rolled in overhead and Hongjoong feared it might start raining again. Instead, it remained overcast, the sun blocked out and the swimming hole was bathed in gray. It went from pleasant to haunting with little hesitation, the swimming hole embracing its new outfit eagerly. The trees shuddered and the water lapped a little harder. The vibrancy of the scene changed, dampened by the natural procession of clouds and it felt uncanny. The birds had stilled, hiding. A chill creeped into him as he lifted his camera one more time.  _ Click _ . It was his turn to hold his breath.

 

Mary was right, and so was her daughter and so was anyone else who thought it but didn’t say. There was something in the water and he was certain he’d just gotten it on camera. The eyes stared back at him, shrouded partly by a curtain of dark hair and what could only be described as muck and grime and a questionable amount of other things. But it was the  _ eyes _ part of this that was really what he was getting at.

 

The glowed golden in the gray of the scenery, like they’d meant to stick out. Haunting and like they’d forever be burned into his memory. The clouds moved on, the sun breaking through the moment and as he lowered his camera, he saw nothing where there had been something.

  
  


“So you’re saying you saw it.”

 

Hongjoong was going to need to talk to someone about the reception out here. Or maybe he should have just made this a regular call. But he couldn’t pass up on the look Seonghwa had given him when he’d practically dropped his phone with how excited he was. The other must have just woken up because he had on the hairband that he used when washing his face. How many hours back was Nevada? It was only about nine am here…

 

“Also, why are you awake at six am?”

 

“You called me.”

 

“You answered in two seconds, you were already awake.”

 

He paused, watching his step as he picked his way back to the cabin. There was quite a bit to unpack with all of this and now he was very sure he wanted to start scheduling interviews. This was monumental, this was -

 

“Joong, slow down. It’s too early for me to be excited.” He can hear Yunho whining in the background. Hwa was rubbing his eyes when Hongjoong looked down at his screen. Right. It was early over there.

 

“Sorry; I think I’m gonna grab my laptop from the cabin and head into town. I’ll call you back when I get there.”

 

“Wait!” It’s Yunho’s voice, the word drawled out with sleep. “I wanna see the cabin. You said it was nice. I want proof.”

 

He huffed out a laugh at the younger, smile tugging his lips upward. “Sure, hold on.” Once he’d rotated the camera, his speaker was letting loose the obvious sounds of excitement. He could have sworn he heard the word  _ kinky _ and the question of if that was his bedroom when he showed the glass side of the house. He decided not to answer.

 

His excitement for his find this morning was not to be dulled, though. He made quick work of shoving his laptop and notebooks into a satchel and practically skipping up the trail. He regretted it. By the time he reached the bike that had been left for him - wondered when they had time to do it - he was winded. Maybe part of his stay would go to keeping him in shape with the amount of walking he was doing.

 

By the time he reached town, his legs were screaming and the cell reception was a whole lot better. The little basket in the front of the bike was convenient in that he could drop his stuff in there as he started a call to Seonghwa again. It took him longer this time to answer, but he was fully dressed and also on his way.

 

“Are you on a bike?” He looked amused, dark brows lifting.

 

Hongjoong huffed. “Yes, I am. Are you surprised?”

 

“No, but you look winded. It’s a cute look.”

 

“Bite me.” It was starting to get crowded, headed into a more populated area. Which meant someone overhearing him speak into his ear phones was highly possible. He had very little worries about how tame a conversation with Seonghwa and Yunho could be at such an early hour.

 

“He’s right; you do look cute. Boy next door cute.” Joong’s brows rose, his nose wrinkling at Yunho’s voice.

 

“Ew, don’t call me that.” He slowed slightly on the bike, glancing down in time to see Yunho peering into the camera. “How’s things for you two?”

 

Rather than wait for the funds from a grant, the two of them had set out to find their luck with the money in their collective accounts. For now, Yunho was trailing Seonghwa until he’d saved enough to go his own way. 

 

“Dull.”

 

“I thought the Fair Folk would like Nevada. Seems nice.”

 

“Well, one, I think you’re mistaking us for Colorado and two, you’re right; it is nice.” 

 

He came to stop in front of the diner he’d eaten at with Robert before. A small placad boasted fast wifi; he’d burned that into his memory when he’d first seen it. “You can revoke my citizenship then since I don’t know my states apparently. I can always go back to Korea.” He thought someone might have looked at him funny while he said this.

 

“Ha ha. You know we’d miss you too much.”

 

“Of course you would.” He looked up in time for a waitress to greet him at his table, not quite a smile on her lips. “Hold on, guys.”

 

“What can I get you?” She was young, but her voice was older than her face. “The specials are on the menu to your right.”

 

“Just coffee, with cream, please.” He offered a smile she didn’t return fully.

 

In his ear, he heard Yunho scoff.  Seonghwa rolled his eyes. “You used your establishment voice.”

 

“I am in an establishment.” Joong pulled out his laptop, and in the process managed to practically rip his earphones from his phone. Which, ordinarily might have not been a problem if it weren’t for Yunho’s very loud question.

 

“So you meet any hot guys yet or is it dryer than the Sahara?” Someone set a mug down too hard, and a fork scraped a plate behind him.

 

“It’s been less than a week and it rained for three days.”

 

“And?”

 

“And I didn’t meet anyone. Except Robert. And Mary. But they’re older and married and very nice.”

 

“Just because this is a nerd trip doesn’t mean you can’t get dicked down by some cute fisherman Joe.” That statement came out a little louder than the last and Joong regretted having propped up his phone the way he did. He locked eyes with a particularly scandalized older woman before responding.

 

“They don’t fish here.”

 

“Okay, then Farmer Joe.”

 

“No farms. I don’t think. I have to ask.”

 

“ _ Okay _ , then Mechanic Joe. Any Joe. A dick -” The headphones decided to cooperate as he slid them back into the jack, Yunho’s statement going into the buds that had dropped from his ears. The same woman he’d met eyes with sniffed and went back to her meal.

 

“Yunho, calm down. I promise to have fun while I’m here.”

 

“You better! You deserve it.”

 

“Can you put Hwa back on the phone? You’re giving me a headache.”

 

“You’re a jerk.” He stuck his tongue out at the other before passing the phone.

 

“Hwa, think you could help me with some editing? I also kind of feel too anxious to look and see if I actually caught the thing on camera.”

 

“Totally understandable.”

 

“I’d kiss you right now if I could.”

 

“I would accept it eagerly with an open mouth.”

 

“That was really gay.”

 

Hwa laughed, the sound not as pretty as it was in person. “Yunho isn’t the only thirsty one out here in Nevada.” Somewhere in the background, Yunho was screaming - not quite at the top of his lungs - how it was  _ one time _ . He made a note to ask about it the next time he called.

 

“I’ve gotta get down to business, so gentlemen.” He gave a salute that they returned before the call ended.

  
  


The hum of his laptop was a comforting sound. It contrasted the clink of cutlery around him, and the not so subtle thud as his waitress placed his coffee on the table. Her almost-smile had since dropped.  “This is a  _ family _ establishment.” He wasn’t sure what part of the conversation that was heard had been referred to, but he didn’t get the chance to ask. She was gone like a fire had been lit under her and something told him he wouldn’t be too sure if he should drink that coffee.

 

Sighing, he connected his camera to his laptop and got to work. Moving files wasn’t hard work and he didn’t actually have to look at them very hard, but it could get annoying since everything was autosaved with a bunch of numbers. He could hear Seonghwa throwing a fit over how easy it would be to mix these things up and how some of the numbers weren’t in the right order. Which meant he would need to go through over a hundred pictures and rename to something that would at least stave off some annoyance for the older man.

 

He fidgeted in his seat, tapping on the glass as he worked. The clink of the metal key ring to his bike lock sounded almost like forks on a plate, and he felt a little more in place with each time the sound rung out. Lulled into this comfortable pace, he hardly noticed time inching by - or the people he’d garnered the attention of. Not until they came past his table, slowing to a shuffle. Probably to get a good look at him.

 

It was just a chanced look up. He blinked, they blinked and then sneered. Then shuffled out in their dark plaid and browns, off to work or something. A little late for that. He squinted at the clock on his screen, reaching for his probably cold coffee. Almost one in the afternoon. Not bad on time, considering he’d been up fairly early. He could go on a little longer, and while he’d managed to finesse his charger into an outlet, sitting for as long as he had was starting to take its toll on his sore ass.

 

Stretching - god, the way those pops sounded was satisfying - he supposed he could take a break. Do something else rather than hunch over his laptop. There were still a lot of things he needed to do that involved moving around, but the biggest one was exploring the place would be living. He had a bare understanding of the layout, one that had been sent to him prior to his arrival. The locations officer at New World had expressed that the map might be outdated. Best to find out if it was true, considering something he might need could be gone.

 

Packing his things, he went back out to his bike. So far, he knew of the library, police station, and diner. A sigh of relief left him when the map loaded on his phone, kicking his leg over to push the bike forward. Crossing those three destinations off his list mentally, he went about his business as peaceful as he could. He did, of course, make note of how many bars were in the area. 

 

It was maybe an hour into this - the town hadn’t felt so big when he was going through it before - when he realized the truck behind him had been there for well over ten minutes. It wasn’t too much of a problem if he didn’t catch sight of the drivers. The ones from the diner. Brow raised, he glanced over his shoulder as he pulled off to the side and them to a stop. So they had been following him.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

“You that monster hunter folks are talking about?”

 

He heaved a sigh. Who was even telling people these things? Maybe it was just the workings of a small town; everyone knew everyone’s business. “You could call me that.”

 

“Didn’t know they make you so small.”

 

“Well they don’t  _ make _ anything.”

 

The bearded one, the one calling out to him, had the decency to nod as if he understood. Hongjoong didn’t even understand what this whole interaction was. “Say - they don’t have no rules against you being...homosexual and all that?”

 

It took...a turn. Not entirely unexpected but entirely sooner than he would have liked. Just a week; less than that was how long he’d been here. “How do you know I’m not bi?”

 

“I don’t.” Knock off Gandalf shrugged. “But we have sensibilities around here. Values.” Another shrug and something that was probably supposed to be a chortle. “You understand?” 

 

“I think?”

 

“Good, good. Watch yourself, monster hunter. There’s a lot of big things in this town that could take your tiny ass out.” 

 

It felt like a scene in one of those movies with the token gay kid and that’s probably what made this worse. He half expected for them to pull off, filling the air with laughter that resembled a pack of wild hyenas. To his luck, it was just the bearded one chuckling as they pulled away.  Maybe a scoff or two from his friends, but they kept the classic leer and smirk as they went and it didn’t stop that uneasy churn of his stomach. 

 

Exploration could wait another day. 

  
  


Being deterred by the local douchebags was new and maybe he could have dealt with it fine, but he was alone and suspected that with not much else to do, hitting the gym was a common activity among the town’s young men. That, and maybe drinking if the amount of bars was anything to go by. He’d played it cool after they left and part way back home before picking up speed to get back to the cabin. He kind of regretted it.

With his access to wifi limited, as he had sorta anticipated, he spent the evening writing. Or trying to, at least. Most of his time was spent glancing through the pictures he’d taken. He tried not to linger on any one for too long, for fear that he’d stop and find something he’d regret. But he forced a few words of his report and saved it hastily before making a call up to the library to ask about procuring a room for interviews - at least until he realized the time and thought it would be better to just call in the morning.

 

The morning, of course, provided with nothing fun. Sore limbs - mostly his hips and legs from all the cycling and walking - kept him in bed well into the day. So much for being productive. He could feel his muscles whining at him even just sitting and decided he could just take a day break. Or two. 

 

It wasn’t so bad; it also wasn’t much of a break. Not when he a window for a wall. Viewing the river from his room allotted him the fortune of seeing the changes as they happened. Little things that might not have mattered before. The river was still swollen, but now it’d come to a lazy crawl. The current didn’t appear as strong as it had been the day before, when the rain had stopped. Was that supposed to mean something?

 

The trees dipped lower, like they did in the swimming hole but not too much so. There was a stillness to the scene that contrasted its previous appearance. The birds had chirped incessantly were now quiet. As if they’d all gone, but he could still see flashes of them every now and then. Muted, more like. Hongjoong wasn’t much of an avian expert, so maybe it was just his imagination.

 

He passed his day trying to find more changes from his window, no matter how subtle. Another day lazed on and he’d forgotten to call the library, much too entranced.

 

Later, he got an email from Seonghwa. His heart was in his throat when he skimmed the email, gaze darting over the words until they found something to stick to.  _ Oh my god _ . It read like an exasperation, but also in Hwa’s voice whispered incredulously.  _ It’s there _ .

 

He’d never clicked on something faster than he did the picture link. The hotspot from his phone was beginning to irk him, the pixels loading too slowly for his taste. But at last it did and his breath caught in his throat. There, in the water, were the pair of eyes that he had seen before. Staring into the camera, as if it knew what it was. Or was curious; it was hard to tell with a picture that didn’t do the actual moment justice. But this was more than enough for him.

 

He was quick in sending the email to New World. They wanted to be updated and he would do just that - and any excuse to throw out that  _ yes, he was right _ was one he would use. After a moment of checking to be sure he didn’t sound like a deranged fanboy, he attached the photo and sent the email. Would they be impressed? Would they even respond to him quickly? Rather than give into his nerves, he shut off the hotspot and closed his laptop to stare out into the darkened forest in front of his window.

 

Hongjoong was concerned that he was using up his luck.

 

He was awoken not by his alarm or bird calling too loudly, but singing. It wasn’t loud enough that he would say it was super close, but it was enough to rouse him from sleep. Or maybe it was the power of it. He blinked, staring up at the rafters above his bed. It was a disorienting sound; jarring, even. A discomfort settled into the pit of his stomach, head turning to the window. He couldn’t make out much in the early morning light, but in the past couple of days he’d been staring out enough to have almost memorized the view.

 

The rational part of his brain woke slowly. Probably too slowly. He was up and out of bed before he realized it. The siren’s song was melancholy, rueful. The words weren’t words for this one, but it compelled all the same. Staccatoed notes drew him in, almost past the front door. And then it stopped, the water the only sound. He blinked, hand on the knob and that discomfort replaced with a mournful ache. He wasn’t too sure what that was about but he did know that this was the second day of discovery and further proof of what he’d always believed.

 

Again, that rational part of him was already planning out the rest of the day with this event. Call up the library, set up a base of operations for the interview (he doubted anyone would want to come down to the cabin); call Robert or Mary to talk to them, maybe both of them at once. They would have some inkling of what was happening and if what he thought was happening  _ was _ actually happening. The excitement in his steps had in a flurry of rushed movements, phone off the hook before he could even really finish pulling a shirt over his head.

 

The frantic calls lead to him meeting the couple in the diner he’s now dubbed his favorite because it was the only one he’d been to. It was a wonder they even let him back in, but he doesn’t see anyone making a conscious effort to stop him. Just eyes on him when he walked in. Not that he cared; there’d been eyes on him since he got to town.

 

“Whoa, slow down, son. We’re not running away.” Robert chuckled at how he’d practically speedwalked to their table - he was really laying on this fishing grandpa vibe thick.

 

And he might have quipped back that he didn’t think his old legs could carry him far until he spotted Mary’s chair. Her legs were covered by a blanket, but he could make out the impression of her knees. They looked knobby. The woman herself merely laughed at his expression. “I get that a lot.”

 

“Oh - I - I’m sorry I didn’t mean to stare -”

 

“It’s perfectly fine. Kids like yourself do that all the time, then ask if I can do tricks on my chair.”

 

He snorted, the awkwardness fading away into nothing. “Not surprising.”

 

“So what was the rush that you had to get us out here?” He slid into the seat opposite them without further delay.

 

Taking in a deep breath, he steadied himself. “I heard it.” His voice cracks painfully, but he found he didn’t quite mind. Instead, he repeated himself - louder. “I heard it singing.”

 

Their reaction wasn’t the only one had. Maybe people had thought it would be good to keep an ear on him as well as an eye. Cutlery clattered and a dish shattered, the only sound for a moment afterwards being the sizzle of the stove in the back. The silence holds among employees and patrons alike for another beat before it’s broken by the door opening. And then everyone goes back to what they were doing as if nothing had happened. Joong tried not to think too much about the unease seeping into him, or how troubled the expressions of the older couple are. 

 

“That’s early.” It was neither of the two in front of him, but someone behind him. 

 

“It’s never been this early.” The other voice is just as frightened as the first. He doesn’t hear anymore as Robert speaks. 

 

“Hongjoong.” He said his name like it was two separate words but at least he tried. “You didn’t go to the water did you?”

 

“No. I was in my room. I almost left the house, though.” The color dropped from the older man’s face. 

 

“You got any of those fancy noise cancelling headphones? Or earplugs? If not, we can get you some.”

 

The concern was nice, but in all honesty counterproductive. It wasn’t just the siren’s call that had him headed to the water. There was a lot more to this story than he suspected even the people in this town knew. A history so old and perhaps dark enough that it had to be hidden. But he nodded anyways to appease Robert. The man was getting close to hysteric. His assent seemed to calm the man down, though. 

 

“Just...stay from the water, son. Stay in the cabin; don’t go out. I know New World said you’d help us out, but…”

 

“I’m just here to figure out what’s going on.”

 

The statement didn’t make anything better, Robert’s brows furrowing. Before he could say anything else, it was Mary that supplied a warning. “Make sure you contact those folks at New World, then. Let them know.”

 

He had to bite his tongue in order to not tell her what he’d actually already told New World about. That he’d already seen the creature in the water, and it had seen him. But, again he nodded. She smiled, expression brightening. “Why don’t you tell us more about yourself. I thought you’d look as cute as you sound.” The cheeriness of her voice only thinly veiled the tension around them. 

  
  
  


“Everyone in the diner freaked out when I said it.” Maybe he was hyperbolizing, but he wasn’t that wrong. “There’s something up.” 

 

“If you’re in some kind of big ass cult I think you should leave.” Yunho glanced up from whatever game he was playing to the phone perched by his head. “It doesn’t sound too good.”

 

“Not at all.” Seonghwa sounded far off. Probably cleaning something. “It sounds like you should really contact New World and start putting up protections for yourself if you were being lured already.”

 

Hongjoong sighed. They had a point. Their subjects would probably be easier to negotiate with than a creature that would be hell bent on trying to eat him. Why was he so obsessed with a carnage-riddled sea creature? And at that, he wasn’t even  _ close _ to the sea. “I’ll send them an email.”

 

“You can’t call?” 

 

“They didn’t give me a contact number.”

 

“Uh, maybe get on that.”

 

The rebuttal on his tongue was forced back at the sight in front of his window. He hadn’t turned the light on yet in the living room, deciding he would just use the fireplace’s light, which made it easier to see the figures passing by the cabin in the night.  Their torches illuminated faces, a few he could recognize from seeing in town. He thought he saw Mary somewhere in that crowd, but he’d blinked and then they were too far off from his vantage point. But he didn’t miss the limping deer they pulled behind them in their procession.

 

“I might have to call you back,” he offered instead as he hung up.

 

He pushed his wire frame glasses further up his nose, as if it’d help him see what he was seeing better. The last torch dipped out of view and that was when he realized where they were headed. He didn’t need the siren song to call him to the water again, not when he was there in the middle of the night shoving his feet into his boots and slinging his camera around his neck. Not when he was chasing after what was probably some kind of cult headed for the swimming hole.

 

He could hear his heart in his ears as he ran, camera in hand to keep it from knocking against his chest. His legs were still sore but he pushed through it. Missing whatever  _ this _ was didn’t feel like an option. He slowed to a jog as the torches back into view, faces clearer now. He remembered one of them from being in the truck that had followed him the other day. God, this was bizarre. 

 

Swallowing, he paused at a bit of a distance and lifted his camera to his face. He was glad he had such a dislike for flash because then it would really be unfortunate if they caught him taking pictures. The shutter went off as they guided the deer to the water, his finger pressed down on the button. From that viewpoint, he watched as the animal limped into the swimming hole. They corralled it until it was further into the water. The air was heavy with its cries, a pregnant pause taking hold as it grew too weak for even that. Its head dipped into the water once, twice. Then it didn’t come up. 

 

Watching the scene unfold was heartbreaking. But it wasn’t over. The deer surfaced again, or at least, Hongjoong had thought it had. Until the water turned murkier.  _ Something _ lifted out of the water; its tail. For the longest time, Joong had thought - no, he’d developed the theory online and asserted it against other fanatics that said otherwise - that sirens mimicked aquatic predators. But a shark in a river was not what he had expected. The dorsal fin cut through the water as the siren fed, circling its meal lazily. Whatever this gathering was supposed to be, they were feeding it. Appeasing it? 

 

Hongjoong squinted, taking a step. Too far. He felt the ground loosen beneath him, and a squeak passed his lips as he slip forward. The moment - ritual? - was disrupted as all eyes were on him as he tumbled out of the little bit of cover he had. A gasp sounded and the water churned more fiercely. 

 

It was the cold seeping into his clothes that let him know where he was. How close he was. When he opened his eyes, the water came up to his hips. It licked up against his fingers, cool and probably inviting in any other situation. Not when he felt something other than human eyes on him. In hindsight, he didn’t think he would end up this close to the creature. He thought he’d be able to observe it at a distance.  But looking over him was something so horrifying beautiful. 

 

And then it screamed. 


	2. Just Part of the Process

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note - there is gore in this chapter and idk if I described it well enough that it might make people uncomfortable, but I thought it would be good to throw out a warning. It starts and ends with the bolded words.

Hongjoong, in that moment, was very certain that his luck had run out.

 

He had to be on the last drops of it, the siren looming over him. It’s everything he thought it would be; terrifying, predatory.  _ Big _ . It’s large, he supposed, because it had to compensate for the weight and bulk of its tail. A collection of lean muscle, coiled up like snakes in a bag, made up its arms, tapering out from slight shoulders. Hair draped over its shoulders in long wisps - black and red. It took him a second to realize that the red was blood, stained into its hair from swimming through carnage. This was followed up once more by the fear of his luck on its last legs as the siren leaned in closer.

 

It sniffed at the air in his general vicinity, as if it were scenting him. Because it  _ was. _ Whatever it had smelled on him, it had set the creature to displaying teeth and the remains of its first meal. And that was where all hell broke loose.

 

That bellow; he could only guess what it was, but it bit into the stillness. Just like the jagged row of teeth bared at him had done to the deer. It was a deep, hoarse sound. True voiced. Hongjoong had thought about it often; what would they sound like without the compulsion in their voices? It was the sound ringing in his ears now, grating at his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. But once the siren had screamed, so did everyone else and it was suddenly remembering the audience that it had.

 

Blood in the water splashed up as the siren moved, dousing Joong. He remained in place, stuck by both fear and amazement. Maybe it would have been better that he stay that way, so he’d miss the proceedings. From the corner of his eyes he could see it - he could  _ hear it _ \- as the siren pulsed forward. The man he recognized from the truck that had stopped him was pulled in, a step too close to the water. Or maybe the siren was too fast. It might have been slight, but he’d spent years of his life theorizing and comparing and sharks were formidable in their slightness.

 

**The** screaming; he thought of the deer again. Its wails echoed in his mind as the man screamed, the two sounds overlapping. Mewling and struggling until it couldn’t anymore, already weakened by the trap they’d caught it with. The man was dragged into the water with little fanfare, others coming to his aid. But they were hesitant, and it gave the siren time. It was just enough that the siren could be pulled under the waves and when the siren’s tail whipped by, an anguished cry left someone. Joong couldn’t see who. What he could see was red, red, and more red as the person dropped to their knees. There was a bounce to their abdomen that couldn’t be attributed to clothing. Not like that. Something unraveled and fell. Beneath the struggling and cries was the sound of something plopping into the water. Like a stone dropped in.

 

The swimming hole turned burgundy, dying his pants the same color. He didn’t move; couldn’t. Wouldn’t? He had to witness this - he was already here, anyways. The body fell forward into the pool, water lapping up blood and fluid. Another scream, this time from a woman not far off, as she clutched her leg. Or what was left of it. She had been fortunate in that the tail had missed anything vital, but unfortunate in that from about mid calf down was a bloody nub. Even more proof that the siren had heavy shark influences, its scales abrasive and doing so much damage with a simple swipe.

 

Hongjoong swallowed and the struggling continued. The lump in his throat thickened, his stomach churning like the water. The man dragged in was growing weaker with each passing second. The chaos that had begun with him was close to over. His hands grabbed futilely at nothing, at water that slipped through his fingers teasingly. He dipped under, presumedly the siren pulling him to the depths if its tail was anything to go by. It was tail, flailing limbs, and muffling screams that they saw from the shore. Joong noted, absently, the sight of a clasper. Male; it was male. The siren was a he.

 

Choked sobs carried out into the night as they were left to watch and wait. Getting close meant potential maiming. Getting in meant certain death.  So they waited for it to end. The water sloshed forward, and Joong shuddered. It was a shade darker now and the cries were weaker each time they broke the surface. Until they stopped.

 

Just like with the deer, the man was gone. Long enough for the water to still, lull into a state of calm. And then up he came - parts of him. A hand, maybe. Fingers missing, but still a hand. Assorted chunks made their way to the surface. They reminded the cryptozoologist of dead fish in water. The torso broke the calm quickly, entrails dragging behind it in the water. Hongjoong could swear he saw fish picking it at is it floated.  It was ripped open in several spots, bite marks large and many on the flesh.The head was last up, eyes eaten out and jagged claw marks not unlike those that had marked the siren’s flesh along his cheeks. The skull had caved in, supposedly crushed and the jello-y gray of his brain leaked out freely through cracks in bone. His stomach churned and that lump in his throat wasn’t quite so relevant as he turned to the side and emptied out his stomach.

 

In doing so, he missed the next course of action until after it had happened. The splash of water came first and then - he didn’t think being near a gun would be that loud. His ears rang, another bout of nausea taking him and he retched harder. Bile burned his throat as he looked up. The siren didn’t let loose a cry as he slipped back into the water, but the man above him fired another round into the spot he thought it had lurked beneath the surface.

 

Silence, and then. “Mildred; call Penny. Let her know what happened to her boy.” His head, eye sockets staring up into a starless, moonless sky,  floated by and Hongjoong threw up  **again** .

  
  


He didn’t catch up with Mary. She’d seen him and he’d seen her, but nothing was said. She was gone before he could ask her any questions. The man who’d fired at the siren continued giving orders, though they faded into nothing as he stared out at the water. And then a hand was on his shoulder, turning him around to face the speaker. He’d been asked a question, apparently.

 

“What are you doing out here?”

 

“I’m here for that.” He pointed out to the water, head swimming as the images of what had happened floated back to mind. “The siren.”

 

“That ain’t no siren. That’s a demon, young man. And pray tell - why are you out here for it?”

 

He wasn’t really sure if he was forming coherent sentences, voice small. “With New World. Sent to study. It  _ is _ a siren.”

 

“Young man, this is private property-”

 

“Actually, it isn’t.” There were those words that made sense. “The property was given up to the state over a decade ago after the last owner died.”

 

The man scoffed, arm dropping from his shoulder. He appraised Joong, and it was reciprocated. He was older - maybe around the same as age as Robert, but slimmer - with graying hair. He was, though, sporting the start of a beer gut. A small pouch that could probably get worse if he had one too many more budweisers. He must have been good looking in his youth, the traces of it still there in his chin and the set of his eyes.

 

“Well, regardless, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

 

“I-”

 

“Unless you intend to help with clean up, you’ll just be in the way. Head home, young man.”

 

He glanced again at the water, and the carnage floating in it. He didn’t think his stomach would be able to handle the clean up. Not with the wave of dizziness that overtook him. “Yeah. Yeah; you’re right.” He didn’t ask for the man’s name, just turned away and headed back towards the cabin. He was sure he was feeling eyes on his back, but it could just be the start of paranoia.

 

Knowing what he knew now - that he was  _ right _ \- made the churning in his stomach worse. What did being right mean in this context? In this situation, where there were two people dead and one person injured in less than five minutes. Could he have prevented anything that had happened if he’d warned them about what they were dealing with? And - how many years had they been doing something like this? Offering  _ deer _ . If he was going to have a continued streak of being right, then it really never worked in the first place.

Was he supposed to be the one to tell them that?

 

Maybe he was tired, drained from everything that had just transpired, but his limbs felt heavy. His mind was much more active, carrying on a marathon of thought at top speed. It’d chug forward until it couldn’t anymore; trudge through worry and that creeping sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He pushed open the door to the cabin, paused. 

 

It was quiet again, save the river. It moved on like nothing had happened and he was reminded of the diner earlier today. How estatic he’d been, and the subsequent reaction to his proclamation. In a sense, he could say that he’d caused what had happened. His eagerness to divulge what had happened to him with those around him had gotten two people killed.  _ Tell Penny about her boy _ . A mother would grieve.

 

The click of the door was soft, and his steps were sure. He’d contact New World, let them know what happened - is happening; he doubted the attacks would stop with just a botched placation of a creature old and born of pure  _ anger _ \- and think of countermeasures. Maybe they would be able to relocate it to somewhere else. Somewhere far away where it would have limited contact with people.

 

The roll of thunder broke through his thoughts. It was raining  _ again _ and this time, it didn’t feel right. The previously calm river kicked up a fuss as rain beat down on the world. 

 

It was weeping.

  
  


“Are you sure you should be talking to us right now?” Hwa’s voice reached him as tinny, but laced with concern. The reception had gotten worse with this second storm. “You shouldn’t be so close to the river anymore. It’s  _ seen _ you, seen you. Up close. And if you’re not like delusional from shock - then its fully capable of, like, climbing into that cabin and murdering you.”

 

“There’s this marvelous thing called multi-tasking.” He winced at the bite in his tone. “I’m packing as we speak, and shooting New World an email.”

 

“Still no number?”

 

“Didn’t respond.”

 

“Look, this grant money is great and all, but dying doesn’t sound like it’s worth it.” He wasn’t the only one thinking that.

 

Yunho shifted the phone to face him, brows furrowed. “Can’t you like call the game and wildlife police force thing? They’d be better equipped with handling it.”

 

“I don’t think the fishing and game commission can a siren. It might not be so bad since it’s freshwater. But it’s a fucking  _ shark _ . I don’t know what kind, but it’s big and fast. Unless this thing has been migrating - which makes absolutely no sense because why would it leave the sea to come all the way out here -”

 

“Joong, that’s so  _ not _ important right now.”

 

“I know, but -”

 

“But nothing.” Seonghwa’s mom voice - the stern one that got people to feel that pang of guilt for not obeying - stopped him before he could continue. “You need to get out of there.”

 

“Let me just send this email and finish packing. I have to find a raincoat; it’s still raining.”

 

“Keep us on the phone.” He nodded in response, switching his attention fully to the email.

 

New World had questions to answer. For one, he needed a damn phone number from them. Another thing - they now needed to elaborate on what they wanted him to do. They’d approached him with the idea that he was just supposed to see if this was real or not, if it were some sort of hoax. The story they’d given him was that they wanted him to do research, treat it like it was any other animal. But it wasn’t any other animal. It was a sentient being - something that had once been human and had no qualms with using the intelligence it retained.

 

So they would need to make clear  _ what _ they wanted from him, because it wasn’t just research. 

 

He was maybe a sentence away from finishing up the email when there was a sound from the porch. A bang, a thud; he couldn’t make it out in the rain.

 

“What the fuck was that?”

 

“Joong are you okay?”

 

The pair on the phone were a lot more panicked than he. It was the numbness, come back to haunt him. Maybe it was nothing; maybe it was the man from before coming to take shelter from the rain after cleaning up at the swimming hole. He hoped it was. “Don’t open the door!” When had he gotten out of his room? His legs were carrying him out to the front door before his mind could stop them.

 

He froze, his hand on the knob. It was scratched. A sigh of relief left him; it must have been a cat caught out in the rain. He was used to those. Plenty of his neighbors had cats and they’d sometimes wander far from home. So that’s what he expected when he opened the door, his mind throwing away any notion that it could be anything else for fear of it being the exact opposite of a calm encounter.

It was not a cat at his doorstep, but a person. Their hand flopped down as the door opened. He was stuck in place, taking in the scars and puckered flesh where pink water flowed. Except it wasn’t water, but blood and now he was really freaking out. The squelch of water as it seeped into his socks went ignored as he stepped outside into thee rain. He was drenched in seconds, fingers slipping over cold flesh. He dug his nails in for purchase, hissing as if it were his own shoulders. But he managed to pull the boy up enough to wrap his hands around his biceps  and drag him inside.

 

He’s naked, as far as Hongjoong can tell. He wasn’t doing a full on investigation of a naked man in the middle of a storm. It was quick work to drag a blanket out to the prone boody on the floor. The only indication that the stranger was even still breathing was a shuddered rise and fall of his chest. It continued in a botched pattern after the blanket was laid over him. Something indecipherable came from his room, from his laptop no doubt. He’d almost forgotten about the skype call.

 

Rushing back to his room, he frowned into the camera at what he assumed was his friends calling the police.

 

“Guys, I think I might not be leaving just yet.”

 

“The fuck you are.” The sternness was stronger than before, laced with panic as his voice rose in octave. 

 

“There was this injured kid at my door; I can’t just leave him here. It’s raining too hard for me to carry him and all my stuff, too.” As if to prove his point, the rain pelted down hard on the cabin, the sound bouncing around inside.

 

“How injured?” It was Yunho this time, worry strong in his tone as he shifted the phone to fit both of their disapproving scowls on the screen.

 

“I dunno.”

 

“Well, go check!” Just a minute ago, they’d been entirely against his staying.

 

Rather than have to run back into the room, he carried his laptop with him. He held it close, the patter of his now bare feet on the wood floors matching the drumming of his heart. The boy was right where he’d left him, curled up more under the blanket now. He was shivering something fierce, though. Setting his laptop down, he swallowed. Right; check injuries. He could do that.

 

The stranger’s eye were squeezed shut, a look of pain contorting his features. His skin was grayish-blue in color and almost bloated. Hongjoong suspected that if he looked at the other’s fingers they’d be wrinkled like he’d been in water for too long. The mop of long hair tangled as the boy shifted again in his fitful sleep. Hongjoong ran a hand through his hair, tugging lightly at the tips of his mullet as he considered the best way to go about this. He could just tip the blanket and look for the spot he’d seen blood. Easy, simple.

 

He did just that, gingerly lifting the blanket to see the boy’s side. There, just below his ribcage, were the round openings of wounds. Too precise a circle to be anything else then what he suspected. “Fuck.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Guys - do either of you know how to remove a bullet?”

 

“Why the fuck would you need to know that?” 

 

“This sounds like some sort of police thing, not a handle in your kitchen thing.”

 

Hongjoong scowled, looking up at his laptop. “I don’t think  _ anyone _ is making their way out here tonight.” Not after what happened at the swimming hole. No; they’ve got other things on their minds out in town. The boy shuddered again, and he dropped the blanket to cover him back up. He turned away to light the fire - why hadn’t he done that before. A stupid move, really.

 

“Uh, do you have to take it out?” Yunho’s voiced bordered on confused, brows furrowed. “Because it says you don’t always have to take it out. You’re no trained professional so I really...wouldn’t try it.”

 

“I don’t  _ know _ if I have to take it out because I’m  _ not _ a trained professional. Seonghwa, do you have anything?”

 

“There’s a lot about closing the wound but that’s about it.”

 

That was an alarming idea, given the situation. The situation being two bullet wounds. “That it?” Maybe if Hongjoong played it cool, confident, and collectd he could get through it. “I’ll get the first aid kit.” He prayed that the kid didn’t wake up during all of this. 

 

This was how he ended up on his knees in front of the couch, a sewing needle he’d fished from in the draw in hand and some thread from another threaded through the loop. That had taken him even more time and he had to wonder how the boy was even still alive at this point. The Skype call had ended with Seonghwa and Yunho both promising to get into contact with New World to communicate what was happening since he was otherwise occupied. He held his breath as needle pierced flesh. It was no different from when he’d gotten his ears pierced, he reminded himself. Just...on a different part of the body. He tried not to think too hard about the resistance against the thread as it went through the hole, and then the next and the next. 

 

The boy hadn’t woken up through the process. Not even beforehand when he’d pressed rubbing alcohol into the wound, or after the first one when that first hole was closed up. It was only when the second bullet hole had been closed that the boy stirred, squirming just as Hongjoong snipped the thread. He didn’t know whether he should cry or scream when his eyes opened and he lunged forward. It was instead a choked mixture of the two as both of them went down. The boy yelped, curling in on himself once more, but in the process raking his nails along Joong’s shoulders. Warmth and a flash of pain went through him, teeth grinding as he shifted. Red seeped into the parts of his shirt not torn.

 

He might have paid more attention to his wound if the boy didn’t look up again, glaring at him with golden eyes that made his breath catch in his throat. The glowed as the power went out, trained on him. Truly, his luck was running out.

 

The two considered the other in the dark, though it felt a lot more like Hongjoong was staring into the belly of the beast. He’d brought a siren - the same siren that had effortlessly pulled a person to pieces just hours before - into his home unwittingly. If he’d listen, moved faster, he might have missed this whole thing. And  _ god _ , Hongjoong was regretting it now. The rain slowed, little plinks and patters against the roof. Thunder hadn’t rolled in a couple of minutes and it felt as if the sky had calmed down.

 

He swallowed, and he swore the siren’s eyes followed the motion. But it was tired, barely holding itself up. Maybe, with the remnants of its energy, he could reason with it. But that relied on whether or not it was even capable of forming coherent sentences. The singing he’d heard before had been monosyllabic and that wasn’t much of an indication of his language capacity. But the siren was old enough to know how to form legs from his tail, so that had to mean something.

 

“D-did I hurt you?” A start. The siren blinked. He assumed it did, because the curtain of hair falling in his face lifted slightly. “I didn’t mean to. You were hurt. I tried...to fix you.”

 

The siren didn’t seem to be horribly offended, sniffing for a moment. He blinked again, head cocked to the side as he considered Hongjoong. It didn’t feel as predatory as he suspected it was meant to be. It felt almost...curious. And then - “Know you.”

 

Words. He’d formed words into a sentence, even if they were only two. “You know me?”

 

“Yes. From Limharpver.” The siren’s voice was hoarse, sounding more like a croak. But not the same as his true voice. This sounded a lot less comfortable.

 

“Is that what the swimming hole is called?” The other nodded. “What do they call you?”

 

The siren seemed...surprised. Another blink, mouth opening with a soft  _ oh _ like he’d never been asked something like that before. The fire crackled in the fireplace, heat pooling against Hongjoong’s back as he waited. There was a moment of consideration again, as if he wasn’t sure if this would be information he wished to share. “San. My name is San.”

 

There was a beat of silence before the siren sneezed. Oddly human, and endearing, he did it again, a violent shudder coursing through his frame as he drew the blanket around him closer. It was only then Joong noticed the faint dusting of red in his cheeks, his neck. 

 

“Are - are you sick?”

 

“Body burning bullet.”

 

“It’s  _ what _ ?” Joong had never really pondered the healing capabilities of sirens. In most cases, he supposed they healed like anything else, but then again - he’d never thought about one getting  _ shot _ . “It’s...burning the bullet?”

 

San nodded, another sneeze punctuating the movement. “Healing.”

 

“Do...do you run at a hotter temperature than people do?”

 

At that, San made a face. Or part of his face contorted, the part that the human in the room could see. “There is poison in our blood.”

 

It was an  _ acid _ . Why did that make so much sense? That they would be creatures so spiteful that down to the last drop of them would be harbor that hostility. He wasn’t quite so concerned now, but his impromptu guest was still shivering. Getting dressed would probably help a lot.

 

“I’m going to get you clothes.” The siren only blinked in response, so Hongjoong took it as his cue to get up and do what he’d claimed to do. 

 

Stepping into his bedroom, Hongjoong thought his legs would give out. He had a  _ siren _ , in his home. Temporary home. Rented shelter; whatever. A primary source for something he had set his life to figuring out. That long struggle of having to explain what he wanted to his parents suddenly felt like nothing as the realization continued to settle in.

 

He had a siren in his home. A siren that had proved itself to be eager in tearing into flesh and taking life as easily as breathing. The careless death and injury he’d witnessed before had been a side effect. The primary target had been one person, and instead it’d gotten three. The dryness of his throat was something he’d only felt in that moment. It felt like a cotton swab had been shoved in his mouth. San had shown no such inclination to have him meet the same fate, but who could say when that would change?

 

His body thrummed at the thought, and yeah, he was really hoping Seonghwa or Yunho had managed to reach New World. They’d at least get him out of here. Hongjoong swallowed, mind abuzz with the sickening thought that the siren might make him a meal tonight to aid in the healing process, if that was how it worked. He’d have to appease San, at least for now. Rifling through the drawers he’d emptied some of his clothing into, he grabbed a pair of sweatpants and two shirts. His shoulder ached, as if to remind him that he, too, was injured. 

 

Once he’d changed out of the ruined shirt, he felt he might be able to face the siren in front of his fireplace. He found San staring warily into the flames, jaw slack. In the light, he was beautiful. What he can see of him. If this was someone other than a siren and maybe a wet, naked man of the woods, he might consider himself like those kids from  _ Jumanji _ and try to clean him up. His hair hid most of his features, but what he could see was decidedly pleasing to the eyes.

 

The siren’s lips parted and the human tensed for a moment. Until he noted that the light of the fire reflected off of mostly human teeth. Mostly. That part had his steps tentative and his concentration on not making any sudden movements. San turned to him as he approached, head dropping slightly with his gaze to the clothes. The fire crackled, deafening in the tense silence that had formed between them, as Hongjoong handed them over to the creature and turned away. He couldn’t hear any movement for a moment, and then there was a rustling as the blankets slipped.

 

There was a burning curiosity to see to what extent this transformation went. How it went. It wasn’t really something he’d considered before. A siren was meant for the sea, not land. He supposed they could come to land if they wanted, but he’d always thought that it was less...inconspicuous. He had seen legs when he’d dragged San in. But were they perfectly normal human legs. Or were they scaled? He couldn’t see much of his neck to wonder if the gills remained.

 

It was difficult, thinking about it and thinking about  _ not _ being a pervert. Hongjoong suspected that the siren wouldn’t care, but still. There was some lines that shouldn’t be crossed and peeping on the creature changing was one of them. A cold hand touched his shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

 

Standing, Hongjoong realized there wasn’t much difference in their height. Perhaps no more than an inch, but he had the presence of someone bigger. He was certainly a lot bigger in his full siren form. Should he even be calling it a form? Was there a better word he could use? The sweats hang low on his waist, the exposed flesh defined and muscled. The sleeves of the shirt have been rolled up and Joong was forming an assumption that maybe the siren wasn’t so keen on having fabric restricting movement. His arms are lined with scars, some deep and some shallow enough that they’re fading. He wondered if those were a product of other people trying to attack him, or something else.

 

“Thank you.”

 

His thoughts were interrupted by the two words, and the voice that delivered it. It was smoother than it had been when they were speaking before. The human of the pair simply nodded, a small smile on his lips. He wasn’t sure what to say about it, since it was just a simple act of getting clothes for someone naked.

 

He shrugged and offered a, “You’re welcome,” before shuffling past the siren to collect the first aid kit. He was acutely aware of the siren hovering behind him, as if he had something more to say. But he doesn’t have the time, not when the knocking starts on his door. Hongjoong would have only loved to be so popular in high school, rather than ridiculed for the belief in something like the Loch Ness.

 

But this also presented a problem. He had a very much real siren standing behind him and the unknown at the door. He glanced back to the creature, and found him tense. Hands fisted and jaw clenched, he glared at the door as if that might make the pounding stop. There was a flurry of movement - mostly on Hongjoong’s part - as he shoved the siren towards the open door of his bedroom.

 

He pressed a finger to his lips as the other hissed at him, sharper teeth sidling up alongside the more human-looking ones. With his free hand pressed against the other’s chest, Hongjoong had to admit that there was a fair amount of muscle to the siren. Not the thought to have in the moment, but one that was unavoidable given he was pretty sure the other was fully capable of giving him a fear boner at this point.

 

With the humanoid creature silenced, he made sure to communicate that he ought to stay that way before shutting the door and rushing off to door. His shoulder throbbed as he reached for the door, hissing as he opened it to his visitor.

 

It was the man from earlier on in the evening. Except - he was in uniform. Hongjoong should have recognized that authority in his voice. There was a special kind of note to it that had been familiar, and while he was clearly the ringleader, it made even more sense that he was an officer. The man tipped his wide brimmed hat at him, gaze darting past the smaller to see inside.

 

“I see you made it home safe.”

 

“Yeah, I did.”

 

“I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I don’t know you, and you showing up tonight turned things south.” Hongjoong remained silent, jaw clenching. It was the reaction he must have wanted, because he continued on. “I don’t know what you want here, but we don’t want anymore repeats. Learn your limits, son.” The word sounded more condescending than when Robert said it. It made his stomach turn with a bout of nausea, entirely unrelated to the guilt sitting there in his insides as he’s reminded of the lives taken today.

 

And that he had the one responsible for it hidden in his bedroom.

 

He swallowed, and nodded. “I can do that.” Even to him, his voice sounded small, drowned out by a new force to the rain.

 

The officer stared down at him in response, and then his gaze shifted to his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Your shoulder.”

 

He glanced down, then back to the older man. “It’s the design of the shirt.” A lie he hoped would fare well.

 

The man’s brows twitched. He could only think of the things running through his head. Joong hoped it had everything to do with his city kid stereotyping and no suspicions about the truth. Silently, he begged every deity he could think of to make this moment pass as they locked eyes. His stomach rolled. The rain came down a little harder, pelting the officer and his highlighter yellow poncho. It was transparent enough that he could make out the sheriff badge pinned to his chest.  _ Great _ . 

 

“I’m not one to question clothing choices...or lifestyle ones.” The man squinted, looking past him again. When he glanced back to see where the other was looking, San was peeking out from the bedroom. Even at the distance they were at, Hongjoong could make out the whiteness of the siren’s knuckles as he clutched the doorframe.

 

His heart dropped to his toes. Would he be exposed so quickly? The sheriff continued on. “I understand you’re a different sort from the rest of us, but remember that you’re a visitor. You and your... _ friend _ need not overstep the boundaries we set.”

 

He might have snapped back if there wasn’t some relief in the ignorance the sheriff displayed. He’d mistaken San for a lover, and not a homicidal sea creature. Perhaps a bad impression had been made, but it would have been better than what would probably have been a bleaker alternative. The cryptozoologist nodded eagerly, ready to shut the door as the man turned. But he wasn’t done just yet.

 

“And for the love of God, don’t have any of your open conversations at Milly’s. It’s a family establishment.”

 

Regardless of how little he cared - so little - he forced a smile on his face and nodded again. Just play it cool. He’d done that plenty of times in the face of people like this. The sheriff wouldn’t be able to see the way his grip on the knob tightened. Finally, at last, he closed the door and he felt like he could breathe again. He couldn’t hear if the truck or whatever the sheriff had brought to see him had pulled off, but he slumped against the door. His previously floored heart was running a mile a minute, invigorated with the relief of having narrowly avoided exposure.

 

He turned, ready to head back to the room, and was face to face with San. His expression was unreadable, but he radiated a hostility that fit him too well. He would say it should be a crime that it does, especially with him looking like  _ that _ . There was stifling cloud of something he couldn’t quite name hanging over them. The siren observed him for a moment, perhaps debating one thing or another in his mind. He hoped it was nothing relating to his teeth and sinking them into Hongjoong’s flesh. His brain had to fill in that he meant the unsexy kind of biting, his ears warming at the mental self-correction. The other seemed to pick up on the fact that whatever had happened had passed, shoulders drooping and that aggressive energy dissipating slightly.

 

San pursed his lips, as if wanting to say something - yet again - but decided against whatever it was originally that he wanted to say.

 

“I should go.” An entirely reasonable thing in an otherwise unreasonable situation.

 

But Hongjoong wasn’t thinking about what was reasonable and what was not. Not when he had a siren in front of him. “No; stay. You can’t just get back into the water with a fever.” Maybe he could, since he lived in it and all - but still. “It’s not a problem at all.”

 

“You are...certain of this?”

 

His sentences were getting better. “Yes, I’m sure.” Maybe it was because he’d been out of the water for so long already and he was adapting. He made a mental note to document that. “You can sleep in my bed and I’ll take the couch.”

 

“I cannot put you out of your bed-”

 

“It’s fine. Honestly. The couch isn’t so bad.”

  
  


He laid awake long after he’d sent San off to his room. An hour had been wasted texting the others. A cautious game of beating around the bush to avoid telling the truth of the matter, really. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them; he would gladly leave up any life-altering decisions to them if it came down to it. It was more that he was beginning to have further suspicions about what his point was here. And until he was sure of it, he wasn’t going to be divulging anything lest it go south.

 

He’d had some sense to get up at one point to deal with his wound. It had stopped bleeding, but still hurt, for as shallow as it was. He’d put on ointment gingerly before putting a gauze pad. It’d stung, for the most part, but now it was sore and hurt when he moved a certain way. It contributed to delaying his sleep, but not by much. That was left to the thoughts clouding his mind and forcing him to stay awake to clear them out. 

 

Hongjoong must have fallen asleep at some point, though, because he’s awoken by a soft thud. Pages fell open and a soft hiss followed the sound. When he opened his eyes fully to look up, there was San hunched over a book he must have dropped from the shelf. He looked smaller, curled up around the novel with an air of fascination. The knobs of his spine pressed into the back of the shirt, almost larger and fin-like in shape. He hadn’t noticed them before but that might have been due to the overwhelming nature of the previous night. 

 

As of aware that Hongjoong was now awake, the siren turned. He couldn’t tell if the other was looking at him sheepishly or not, but the small smile on his lips was enough to show that he hadn’t meant to cause a disturbance. It also was large enough that the dip of a dimple was visible. He was very much aware that he had a budding urge to see the rest of the other’s face. 

 

“Good morning.” San’s voice had gotten smoother, smaller in his embarrassment now. “I did not mean to disturb your rest.” He fiddled with the pages of the book in front of him, chin against his knee as he crouched. 

 

“S’fine; my alarm would have woken me anyways.”

 

“Alarm?”

 

“The one on my phone.”

 

“Ph-phone?”

 

Hongjoong felt around for it, retrieving the sleek device from the crevice in the couch. He brandished it knowingly, not expecting the way San’s lips parted. It was hard to truly see what his expression was, but he dubbed it confusion and tried his best not to laugh. The other seemed mildly perturbed by the failed attempt, turning away in favor of looking down at the book again.

 

“Truly, the world has changed if you lot carry around little black boxes like those.” He wasn’t sure if he was meant to hear it, but he did. The siren started as his laughter picked up. 

 

The contrast to the night before was almost jarring. The siren had grown comfortable, perhaps less inclined to feel otherwise since he was healing. But he milled about with ease, abandoning the book in favor of walking towards the kitchen with pursed lips. The phone there rang, drawing his attention like a moth to a flame. His shoulder protested as he sat up, moving to answer it as San stared down at the device.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hongjoong, son; are you okay? I heard you were there last night-” He wasn’t really paying attention to what Robert was saying. Not when San looked at him as he did, mouth agape once more. He had to stifle another laugh to answer the man on the line.

 

“I’m fine, Robert. Nothing happened to me.”

 

“I told you to stay away from the river, boy. I said it for a good reason.  _ This _ was the reason.”

 

“I...I understand. I’m so sorry for having made you worry, but this is why I’m here. I can’t explain it over the phone, but I- I actually need you to do me a favor.”

 

There wa a pase, as if for consideration. Then a sigh, heavy and drawn out. “What is it?”

 

“My stuff arrived up at the bed and breakfast. Could you bring the boxes - there’s only two - and an electric razor?”

 

“For your hair? You getting rid of that thing on your neck?”

 

“Wh - there’s nothing wrong with my hair!”

 

“I’ll be there in a bit, son. And please - stay indoors this time.”

 

Hongjoong kept his word, seeing as he spent a majority of the time trying to make San somewhat presentable and coming up with a story of how the siren had gotten into his home in the first place. The siren was of little help in that aspect, asserting that the truth would be best. Surely, he’d missed out on his own history with the town. When Robert had managed to get to his door, dropping the first box just in the doorway, the human had decided on something half-assed. As he’d expected, the older man turned from him to San, then back again to Hongjoong.

 

“He’s a friend,” was all he could supply in the moment, story out the window.

 

The man grunted, shoving the box further inside before reaching for the other. Joong put off unpacking those in favor of turning San back around to the kitchen, Robert trailing after them. The pair seemed to look dubious at Hongjoong as he brandished shears and the razor. The siren went so far as to tense up in his seat as the room was filled with the sound of the blades cutting into hair.

 

“You said you’d explain it, so I’m here to listen.” Robert crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the counter nearest.

 

Hongjoong paused, words forming. He didn’t want to ruin San’s hair cut and set down the shears for a moment. “I...For a very long time, I believed there was more to this world than what we know. And for a while, people thought that it was just a childish dream. But, it’s not. When I said I was here for the river, I meant it. There are creatures that we can’t explain - not yet, at least - that are out there and your river has one.” He tried not to think about the way San leaned back into his touch at that. 

 

He attempted to make sense of what he was saying himself. “I know, it’s dangerous, but so is pretty much anything out there. I’d sooner risk my life proving what I know to be real than go off living some mundane life that’s expected of me.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his tone, and hoped it’d worked.

 

When he looked up at Robert, the man didn’t say anything. Didn’t seem to react outside of a pensive expression. Rather than focus on the scrutiny of his explanation, he returned to work on cutting San’s hair. A good bit of it was on the ground, deep black carpeting the floor. The siren felt this return of attention, shoulders hunched as if he were bracing himself.

 

The object was to be able to see more of his face. A selfish goal produced by the vain portion of his mind. Hongjoong turned on the electric razor and the other nearly fell off his chair with how quickly he whipped around. His mostly unobscured gaze fell to it and he watched as the other’s eyes widened. Before he could react further, Hongjoong was prodding his shoulder to get him to turn around.

 

“Relax, I know how to use these.”

 

“Your haircut says otherwise.”

 

“Can we please leave my mullet out of this. It’s a  _ statement _ .”

 

“Whatever you say, son.” He was somewhat glad that Robert’s voice carried a note of amusement, even if it was at his expense.

 

The buzz of the razor put San in a trance, probably feeling the vibrations of it against his neck. More hair fell away - not at all as damaged as he had expected - and littered the floor. There was an appreciative sound from Robert. The younger man rolled his eyes, attention on his work. When the last of the hair had been shorn off, the siren looked up at the two men, but mostly at Hongjoong.

 

He whistled, pleased with his handiwork. “So you do know how to use them.”

 

Setting the razor down, Joong scoffed, but grinned. The razor had obscured the buzz of his phone, the screen lighting up to several text messages. 

 

_ Hello! This is Nadia from New World. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say that everyone's comments have been very motivating??? Like thank you all for reading and commenting so much I really appreciate it and it keeps me going.
> 
> Also pls feel free to yell at me for anything I've written on my twitter my dms are open and you can always just expose me as the nerd that I am lol


	3. I am the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh so like I tried something a little different with dialogue later on in the chapter so if it starts getting a little weird let me know. I thought it’d be interesting idk. 
> 
> Also I’m really sorry this is late I just got like Stuck
> 
> And once more, unbeta’d :’)

“I am...revolting.”

There was more venom in the utterance the first time it was said, when Joong had held up a small hand mirror to the siren to show him his reflection. (He’d made a point to ignore the raised brow Robert had shot him, a conclusion already drawn from the old man that he didn’t want to ruin the moment by discussing.) The siren had been none too pleased with his new haircut, turning his face from one side to the other. Hongjoong, breath caught in his throat when molten gold eyes raised to glare at him for not the first time today, would beg to disagree. But he’d already learned around the third time that that was not the best idea he could have.

The siren was a beauty by the standards of a human. Features that were a cross between soft and sharp - sharp jawline, sharp eyes, sharp teeth - set on a face lined with scars. One through his right eyebrow, scoring cleanly down to his temple. Another on his cheek, angry and jagged as it veered dangerously close to his left eye. Still another from his bottom lip to his neck. The scars there are frightening in how close to death they could have brought him. Claw marks, teeth long since having bitten into flesh; all of it recorded on his skin in an alarming number. It was something of a wonder that he could even spot the siren’s gills in all the marks lining his neck. How violent must life as a siren be for it to be _that_ bad?

Hongjoong didn’t pry on the matter. San had caught him staring once and only stared back, the energy to react to it gone. Or maybe he was used to it. The answer was a bit of a toss up, but it was notable that the siren seemed content to lay about more than Joong did. He’d laze on the couch, in front of the fireplace or the window. He’d watched the creature go so far as to pad away to his room and curl up on his bed. The most movement he noticed was the tentative rub at the short hairs on the back of his head or the tug at the longer strands closer to the crown of his head. Second only to raiding the fridge for raw meat.

Observation was something that Joong had come to see as fundamental to his study. When things changed in the environment, it usually meant something. And in the case of the siren living quite comfortably with him for the last two days, the sickness had taken the bite out of him. His fever was high and constant (the cryptozoologist had checked it twice within an hour and it was still high enough to kill a human), leaving him lethargic. Which explained the laying about. And maybe the penchant for taking up the bathtub.

Like, in the current instance. He’d walked in to take a shower, eyelids heavy with his own tiredness. The second day of cohabitation and they were already running into awkward situations. So Joong had quarantined himself to one section of the house to give the siren space, lest he get antsy and decide that he really wouldn’t like a housemate. Which was why he had no idea the siren was in the only working bathroom in the cabin.

He’d stepped through the door, habit unzipping his pants as he stepped up to the toilet before he heard a splash. Draped in the tub - just right for it - was San. Not fully clothed, but the sweatpants were still on and Hongjoong was very grateful for this. The other’s head tilted to the side, neck exposed and -

Then he turned his head quickly, the fastest he’d seen the creature move in the last couple of hours. And maybe the thought would have lingered if it weren’t for the fact that he had his dick in hand to piss. “Oh, god, _Jesus Christ-_ sorry, San!” The siren didn’t respond, but Hongjoong didn’t wait for one to really know if he did. Fumbling with his pants, he dashed out and shut the door behind him a little too firmly. Heat rose to his cheeks and the tips of his ears as it fully hit him that he’d just flashed the siren.

A groan left him and the desire to pee wasn’t quite so strong anymore. He could risk venturing outside to relieve himself. He doubted someone would be out there to report him for public indecency. He doesn’t have to consider it for much longer as the door opened up behind him. The crisp slap of wet feet on wood made him cringe as he turned to face San, water glistening on his skin in the light streaming from the window.

No, Hongjoong didn’t think much of the siren standards. San, for all intents and purposes, was beautiful. Too much so. The gold of his eyes had dulled to bright amber, trailing over the other before he jerked his head in the direction of the bathroom. The shirt he’d been given was balled up in his hands and his sweatpants were soaked. He figured that was what happened when you sat in a full tub half dressed.

And maybe it wasn’t just an urge to pee what has him stepping around the siren - who he catches moving to lay in front of the window on his stomach - and into the bathroom. Their arrangement had to be sorted out better than this. He couldn’t be embarrassed to hear the echo of his own peeing every time he went to the bathroom.

Which would mean that they had to actually talk to work anything out. That was a prospect that set Hongjoong’s heart racing, because how rational would a siren truly be? They might have well been human before, but the searing blade of spite probably cut through the sentience. Or made them a lot less rational, at the very least. Swallowing, he washed his hands to stall going out to talk to the other. No need to rush, right?

When he stepped into the room, the siren was still laying on the floor. Turned on his side this time, he looked up at the human with little interest. They held the stare for a moment before Joong cleared his throat and the other blinked.

“San? C-can we talk?”

The siren blinked again and propped himself up on his elbows. “Yes.”

“Good, because we have to...work this out.”

“What might you be referring to?”

“Uh, you being here. Why are you here?” Joong crossed to sit on his bed, pleased to note that this time around it wasn’t damp from the siren laying on it. “Why...are you here with me? And not in the river?”

San blinked again, sitting up fully. “I cannot go back in the water in this state.”

“Why not?”

“It...is a matter of principle and respect. I do not believe you would be able to understand it. Not yet, I think.”

Joong bristled, licking his lips. Not understand? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Simply that your penchant for land would not allow you to parse the meaning of what I say.”

“Who uses the word _parse_ other than J.K. Rowling?”

San didn’t answer, brows furrowed as he blinked again. Once, twice. “I do not know of this Rowling.” Hongjoong might have looked incredulous because the other blinked up at him again, sporting his own offense to whatever was in Hongjoong’s expression. “I do not often find myself in need of being on land.”

That was understandable. The talk, thus far, had been okay. San wasn’t trying to eat him, at least. “Still - why would you need to be here?”

“I have already answered that question.” The siren blinked again, hands folded on his lap. “I would prefer not to go back in the water until the bullet has been dealt with.”

Hongjoong sighed, closing his eyes. He was getting a headache, brewing at his temples. “How much longer do you need to be here?”

The human started at how close the response was, eyes flying open. “I am unsure; I have not had a gun fired at me in some time.” San loomed over him, eyes narrowed. Not quite focused on the other’s eyes, but more so on his lips.

It wasn’t as though he could claim there had been some tension - just the mandatory fascinated attraction that came with the fact that he had a _siren_ living in his home, sleeping in his bed (without him in it, of course). But there was the undeniable building of _something_ as the siren looked at him. No precursor other than the answered question before the other was kissing him. Lips soft and not quite so urgent. More curious than anything as he licks at Joong’s bottom lip. It’s more shock than anything keeping him totally still.

It, for all intents and purposes, didn’t even feel like a real kiss. Okay, maybe that was a complete lie, but it was the only explanation his brain can come up with in the short seconds after it got itself back together. A breath he didn’t realize he was holding was finally let loose as the siren pulled away, brows furrowed. Contemplative. He was still frozen, left observing the siren as he ran fingers over his lips.

“They are soft.”

“Wh-what?” Hongjoong swallowed, gaze flickering down to the other’s hands falling dangerously close to his thigh.

“Your lips. They are as soft as I thought they would be. Any lover you have would certainly be very lucky.” He couldn’t tell if that was meant to be an observation or a compliment, or both. Joong couldn’t really discern much from the gaze sent his way, and he didn’t have much time to as the siren got up and walked out. San, one; Hongjoong - zero.

 

It wasn’t easy trying to approach the conversation of shared space. Primarily because the siren had seen the first time as an invitation to invade said space. He felt like his insides were constantly twisting in on themselves with anticipation, or maybe fear that it’d move beyond hovering too close or taking a sniff of the smaller’s shampooed hair. Like in the current instance. Two days following the first attempt at broaching the subject of space, the siren lurking close enough to inhale deeply and give a rumble of approval of the scent of his shampoo. But he’s also close enough that Hongjoong can catch the heavy scent of saltwater and seaweed.

It wasn’t bad, per say, but it wasn’t something he wanted sticking to his clothing like it surely would. The cabin was already filled with it - mostly the saltwater, and for that he was glad - and it was throwing _him_ through a loop. He couldn’t think straight (he wanted to laugh, all things considered) when there was the vague sensation of being wrapped up in the grip of the siren. Enough that woke him from his sleep in a cold sweat, limbs heavy and chest heaving for air he didn’t need so much of.

“If you’re going to be on land for much longer, maybe you should consider getting your own clothes.”

San blinked, hard this time. He did that a lot. It was becoming endearing, something he didn’t think that he would ever associate with a siren. He’d respected them, more than anything. The siren pursed his lips, then nodded. “I suppose you are right. Your clothes are rather...ill-fitting on me.”

Joong’s nose scrunched up, something close to a glare sent the other’s way. “Sorry about that.”

“No need for apologies. When shall we be tending to getting new clothing?”

“Today.” As soon as possible. He didn’t think he could take another moment of the shirt lifting up to reveal the peek of smooth flesh - one of the few places devoid of scars - with each little movement.

The siren considered this, blinked again when it seemed he’d come to a conclusion. “Is there anything you require of me before we go?”

“No; we’ll leave when Robert gets here.”

San seemed content enough with the answer. He nodded, blinked again - and then walked out of the cabin. Hongjoong stared out after him, watching the door swing shut. The siren didn’t cross in front of the window that faced the river, the human unable to catch a glimpse of him. He might have followed him out if not for other pressing things at hand. Like the message he’d received from Nadia.

He wasn’t sure of how he would respond to this. Silence from New World, and then this. The timing was...inconsistent. Maybe they were bogged down with other grant recipients. He’d been told he wasn’t the only one. His fingers hovered over the screen, trying to think up how he might respond, and question he could ask. Should ask.

It was eerily quiet, and that did nothing for his ability to put words together. The learned fear did away with anything other the raise of the hairs on the back of his neck, goosebumps on his arms. The birds had stopped, and the gurgle of the river sounded closer to whispering than anything else. A conversation in the distance that he wasn’t supposed to be listening to. Or soft enough that it thought he wouldn’t hear.

He shut his eyes, setting his phone down. He’d deal with it later, like everything else he had to do. Hongjoong figured he could busy himself with finding something to wear into town. Since he wasn’t going to be cycling in, he could perhaps get a little fancier. It was just an errand, but it would be nice to head back into town after...what had happened. The ache in his shoulder only served to remind him that he should probably also stop in at a pharmacy for some medicine.

He’d only just finished dressing when the door slammed shut, just barely heard over the music he’d put on. Locking it had seemed like a waste of time. The river stopped whispering, the birdsong replacing it.

Joong should have expected what he saw when the siren stepped into his room, but then again - there were a lot of unexpected things happening. The white shirt he’d loaned the other was covered in red, dirt stains around the hem. There might have been a paw print, but it was smeared slightly and the crimson was much too overwhelming. It was all over the other’s hands - a short moment of alarm went through him; had he gotten blood all over his door? - and following a slow path down his chin to pool at his collarbone before the shirt could soak it up.

And what was he supposed to do in all this? The most he could do was remain still hopes that maybe the siren wouldn’t realize he was there. He certainly moved as if he didn't. His gait was nonchalant, like a satisfied cat on a lazy day.

The same gait he has as they walk down the street, directed by Robert.

( _The ride up is quiet, mostly. Robert still isn’t sure how to interact with San, who seems content to not do any interacting at all. The angle his head is resting provides the two up front of the truck with a solid view on the gills on his neck. At first sight of it, Hongjoong had panicked, but it’d promptly been waved off as a fashion statement, much like the shirt he’d given San to wear. Schools of sharks swam on it, one in particular being bigger and more center than the rest with the words “Daddy Shark” in a soft cursive font. He admits that it had been a drunken buy, in which no one, not a single soul, had dared him to make and buy it._

_“It’ll be quiet today.” Robert tries his best to conversation, glancing into the rearview mirror. “It being Sunday, and all.”_

_“They hold sacred the holy day? I would have thought they had all but forgotten it.” It’s the first time San has spoken, gaze distant and expression not quite as resentful as it had been before. It would have been better if the two up front knew how to respond to it. A beat passes before Hongjoong clears his throat._

_“So walking around will just be easier for us.”_ )

The siren doesn’t blend in well. Not here, at least. Perhaps the bruised color of the bags under his eyes would be a welcome sight in the depths, but on land they seemed to draw a different sort of reaction. The same could be said of his scars, but he didn’t notice or care. Robert had set them in the direction they needed to go and retreated from the presence of the odd pair. Hongjoong didn’t _think_ it would be hard to find the pawn shop turned multipurpose purchase area, but that was excluding the siren beside him.

It was...something to watch him. There was a tightness to his shoulders, drawn up slightly. It was the same reaction he’d had to Robert’s truck, if not subdued now. He walked on the inner portion of the sidewalk, further away from the street and with his gaze turned on the buildings. Hongjoong could make out the furrow of his brows as each store window passed them by. Some would be boarded up, others littered with signage. He wasn’t sure how new any of this was to him, but he didn’t seem to tire of it.

The stores melded into little houses, prim but slowly deteriorating. Little pickets fences broken in places and replaced by metal. A cat perched on one of the more stable fences, nestled in the divet between pieces. A gentle purr sounded as San drew close, hand outstretched. His expression was blank, melting from the tension that had consumed him for much of the walk. The urge to capture the moment was strong, but felt almost inappropriate. He had to remind himself that the siren wasn’t some casual friend he was taking out shopping - but a mythical creature that could have every intention of eating him when this was over.

Still - he looked entirely too gentle in the moment, and Hongjoong had to turn away. While his view of sirens had been generalized, and based on supposedly fictional theories, he couldn’t let himself be tricked into thinking otherwise. His thoughts were disrupted by the silence that followed him as he continued on. No purring, not the slap of the slides he’d loaned San. Nothing more than a faint crunch like someone had stepped on a dead leaf.

It got louder after a moment, dozens of leaves trampled underfoot now. But then the squelch like an orange being bitten into and he felt the barest spray of something against his hand, the farthest it had reached. When he turned back around, slow and maybe a little terrified, there was on a tail caught in the picket fence. San bit in again, another squelch sounding and tiny little crunches in his wake as his tilted his head back. Only a few steps away, Hongjoong could see the work of muscle clenching as the siren swallowed his meal.

With the cat having promptly disappeared down his maw, San looked almost..content. He popped a finger into his mouth to lick the bit of blood that had gotten onto it, still more at the corner of his mouth and having flashed up slightly to his nose. That was wiped away by the back of a hand, one sporting a fresh scrape from the cat’s only retaliation before it had met its end. It wasn’t hard to process what had just happened, but it would certainly be hard to believe.

A door creaked open, and Hongjoong pulled the siren forward - far enough away that whoever had stepped out of the house would be unable to see more than a flash of them. “Mable? Now where has that cat gone to?” He didn’t think he wanted to explain that Mable had found herself on the wrong end of the predator chain.

“Did you _have_ to eat the cat?” It was hissed out as they walked further, Joong lowering his voice on the off chance that someone would hear them.

San shrugged, unperturbed. “I was hungry.”

“Didn’t...didn’t you eat before we left?”

“A rabbit does not hold me as well as it used to.” The siren blinked, and walked on as if that were that. But it wasn’t.

“You have to have some sort of self-control when we’re in town or-”

“Or what, Hongjoong-ssi?” The first time he’d heard that. It felt like he was mocking him, his politeness from before serving only as an insult now. “They would see me drowned? Drawn and quartered? Burned at the stake?”

“Burned at the sta- could you _not_ do that while we’re in public?” He swatted away at the other’s hands, his fingers digging into the rips of his jeans to tug him forward slightly. Heat rose to his cheeks as he stomped ahead, not caring if the siren was following or not.

Their destination was a robust, single-story building. Smack in the middle of two different bars; the people of this town seemed to love a different sort of drowning. The paint on the outside was peeling, revealing the old signage of something that had been there before. A stray dog meandered into the slim alley closest to them, lifting its leg to piss unceremoniously. San wrinkled his nose, but made no comment, instead trying once again to wiggle his finger into Hongjoong’s jeans.

“Will you stop?” The human of the pair glared up at the siren, who had the audacity to look amused. It was a good look for him; Joong would never tell.

But the look was wiped clear of his face as they entered. Hongjoong thought the siren’s eyes might have glowed their bright golden hue as his gaze shifted over to the counter. The slight shift of his gills, the flaring of nostrils; he could practically hear the fins pulling at skin and making it lay taut against flesh as he held down the transformation. The coiling of his shoulders returned, the tension in them clear as his fists and jaw clenched.

There was no one in the store but a fairly unfriendly looking old woman, flipping through the pages of a magazine at the counter. She looked up as the two stepped inside, brows furrowed and a combative look to match San’s. There was something of a warning in the way she tilted her head, a challenge in the way her gaze lingered on Hongjoong and he could do no more than offer her a smile and push the siren towards where he suspected the clothes would be. He could handle a debate online, but one in person was a different monster.

The siren only calmed slightly, but the barest of growls rumbled up from his throat. A warning; to who? It wasn’t like the woman had superhuman hearing. Not that Joong knew. But he had doubts about whether an older woman with a purple streak in her hair and a leather jacket would be able to take on a siren with years of killing under his belt. But - there was room for surprise. And he’d like to avoid that sort of surprise.

The passed by racks of random trinkets and antiques that had no value to anyone in town thus far. A few watches that looked fairly newer; there was a case of rings with little price tags hung up. The air was thick with dust, thicker the more they walked. The objects in the display case got odder as they went and Hongjoong stopped paying attention in favor of looking for what they’d meant to get in the first place.

The clothing racks were pushed further back, and the collection was starved. Both the siren and human wrinkled their noses this time around. He wasn’t sure if San had done it for the same reason he had, but there was much to be desired with what they had to choose from. Not like they could make much of a fuss about it. He ran a hand over the fabric, brows furrowed and attention not entirely on the siren milling about the racks. So long as he didn’t get far.

It was a matter of guessing what size San was, but it wasn’t hard to guess that he might be on the smaller side; he appeared rather slim. He glanced up at the other, seeing him eye a shirt down the aisle. With a few options slung over his arm, he approached the siren and dragged him over to what he assumed was supposed to pass as a changing room.

“Is there a particular reason why you keep doing that?”

Keeping the siren’s fingers away from the rips in his jeans proved to be a constant task. Whatever his fascination, came even as the other attempted to change into the clothes Hongjoong had found him. San would wedge his finger between thigh and fabric, tugging the human closer. The action would only further wedge said finger into his jeans. His face might as well have been up in flames.

San shrugged, blinked twice. “Because I desire to. Is that not the purpose of such a design? But why do they require that many holes?” He blinked again. Hongjoong had only just narrowly avoided getting an eyeful of siren less than a second ago.

“Like when you kissed me and ate that cat?”

“Yes. Is that a problem for you?”

“Uh - yea, it _is_. You can’t really do that kind of stuff in public.”

“Would you prefer we did it in private, then?” He wanted to call the stretch of the siren’s lips as smirk. He hadn’t thought the creature capable of it, aside from the very small one he’d seen earlier of his amused expression.  “There were an abundance of youthful couplings by Limharpver. Enthusiastic, they were. I had thought that their descendants might be of the same ilk.”

“And _what_ do you mean by that?”

“Loose.”

It took him a moment to understand what was being said. A hateful coil of his stomach, and it set in. “That’s a pretty shitty thing to say about someone.”

“There are certainly a lot of ‘shitty’ things that could be done to someone.” The smirk was gone, all amusement in the wind as the siren stepped out. “But I do offer my apologies for insinuating that you were no different.”

“Sure, apology accepted.”

“Thank you.” It wasn’t as soft as the first thanks he’d been offered by the siren, but it felt just as sincere. “You have my word that I will not make that mistake again. Shall we return to the task at hand?”

The task at hand was mostly just assessing how bad the latest try-on had been. By the very low standards they had set, it wasn’t bad...if the siren could button it up. The high waist was something of a blessing, Hongjoong supposed, but also a curse. “You look like you’re wearing dad jeans.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing; don’t worry about it. This one fits fine so we can just put it in the pile.” A measly pile that couldn’t really be called a pile. At least they had variety in tops. A few moments passed, another pair of pants handed over through the curtain, before Hongjoong spoke again. “Would you do that again if we weren’t in public?”

“Whatever could you be talking about?” He sounded distracted; probably struggling with the zipper.

“Kissing me.”

The siren poked his head out, brow raised. A slight peek of collarbone followed where the curtain didn’t close enough around him. “You have made it clear that you do not like it. I truly am sorry if I have happened to overstep any boundaries. I did not see any indication that you were spoken for, and like I said-”

“Spoken for?”

“Betrothed.”

Hongjoong could only sputter out a, “I’m not married.”

“Not even a lover?”

“That depends on what you mean by that.”

“So you have not advanced courtship with anyone? Performed coitus with another?” The siren seemed almost disappointed.

“For your information, I _have_ had sex, thanks very much for that.”

“I have offended you again. My apologies.”

They don’t speak anymore about that particular topic, or much else for that matter. Their walk to the counter was silent and Hongjoong could say he was a lot less friendly when he smiled obligatorily at the older woman behind the counter. She glanced between the two of them and their clothing, as if making her own judgement of the situation. Her eyes lingered on what he assumed was the siren’s gills. But it was the same time that his own attention jumped to something behind the counter.

It looked like a muzzle. One meant for humans, not dogs. The leather was creased and the metal bars over top of it were gapped and curved. It wasn’t clear if a few were missing or if that had been the intended design. Whatever the case, it looked in otherwise pristine condition.

“Is that...a human muzzle?”

The woman glanced back, following his gaze. Her expression hardened as she nodded. “They used to use them in the trials.”

“Trials?” What legal proceeding in this town required a muzzle?

“Witch trials. According to old books, some of the girls got mouthy and liked biting their babysitters.” Her tone was flippant, a chuckle punctuating the explanation. He couldn’t think that talking about innocent people being killed on suspicions of being witches was anything to laugh about. “They also thought they might find a way to bite through the ropes when they threw ‘em in the river.”

The woman stopped, gaze on San again. Sensing the tension coming back, Hongjoong offered another question. “You’re selling it? For how much?”

“You buying?” Something like recognition crossed her face. “Ain’t you that monster hunter folks been talkin’ about? Heard you messed up big time on your hunt.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, especially not in front of San, but he supposed it would need to be addressed. “I’m not hunting anything; I’m a cryptozoologist. And yes, I would like to buy it.”

She clicked her tongue, head tilted. “For you and your fuckups? I can give it to you free. Ain’t much good sittin’ there; been in that case for years.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Just tell your friend to watch himself.” She was a lot less friendly then. “That look of his could get him into a lot of trouble.”

Taking this as their cue, Hongjoong patted San’s arm and pushed him lightly towards the door as she moved to bag the muzzle, too. He had a feeling he might need it. The siren remained in place, eyes on the silver jewelry in a display case below the counter. The woman followed his gaze, but before she could make any offers, Joong had managed to shove the creature forward towards the door.

 

“So you...are a ‘monster hunter’.” Hongjoong winced, sucking in a breath. He didn’t look up from his phone, partly too scared to do so. What kind of expression would be on San’s face? “Hongjoong-ssi.” There it was again; mocking, venomous.

“I’m _not_ a monster hunter. I don’t hunt anything.” He scrolled through twitter.

The siren shifted, staring down at the phone in Joong’s hand. “Then, pray, tell me; what are you, if not a monster hunter? What am I to you, then?”

“I’m a cryptozoologist.” He didn’t look up, but he felt the eyes trained on the way he licked his lips. “You are a siren. I study. Animals like you, but predominantly aquatic. My friends do the same, but they’re not with me.”

Quiet settled in, wedging itself between them. Wind whipped the leaves around outside the window, carrying them into the river and away from the trees they came from. San shifted on the couch; the strain of his weight moving around shifted Hongjoong’s own.

“Hongjoong-ssi.” It wasn’t as venomous as it had been before, but there was a bit of a bite there. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. “I am not an _animal_ to study.”

At that, Hongjoong sucked in a breath. There was a lot that could be said about what made an animal and what didn’t. He could make any sort of remark on how the human himself was an animal, and how all his peers were as well, but looking up silenced them. The siren had taken to looking out the window, watching the beginnings of a storm. His expression had softened, the hard lines of spite leaving him in favor of something mellower; sadder.

“I. I know that. _I know that_. This is more like...when people study long gone figures in history. We just - have to call it by another name.”

“So you would resign me to the tomes of history rather than see me as I am in the present? I am doubtful that I would a person worthy of remembering.”

“No - _no_ \- that’s not what I meant.” He sighed, setting his phone down. It no longer provided a distraction, gut wrenching as he stared over at the other. There was...a lot to be said of what San being there now meant. And the pain that was evident on his skin. “I want people to know that you’re _real_. That you exist - here, now, however long - and that you’re not the only one of your kind.”

The siren seemed to consider his words. His gaze remained on the window, staring out as the rain began to come down. Not the violent, vociferous storm he’d seen when the siren had appeared. But it wasn’t the joyous downpour of rain that had lasted those three days. It was softer, like a mother lulling a child to sleep or into a deep calm. Just the soft patter of rain drops on wood, over rock and dirt.

“Let me show you what is real.”

San stood, taking Hongjoong’s hand in his own as he lead him to the door. Every instinct - every vague sense of self-preservation - told him he ought to feel the greatest amount of fear and resist. Which was a reasonable assertion on the behalf of his fight or flight response, but he could do neither of those things, the siren’s grip on his hand firm but not enough to crush his fingers like they could do so easily.

He shuddered as they stepped outside, rain greeting them with soft kisses all over, drops wetting wherever they could reach. The siren remained determined in leading the human, taking him down the rocky path with ease that came with walking it frequently. Hongjoong wondered how frequently.

They stopped at the river, far from the swimming hole. It was the same as Hongjoong had seen it the first day he’d arrived. Like a child at play. Grass tickled at his heels; he’ll only managed to shove his feet haphazardly into his slides, water pooling between his toes. He tried not to think of how his hand tingled where the siren had let go of him, rain circling the spot.

“ _This_ is real.”

“The river?” It was real. There wasn’t anything to deny about it. San glanced at him.

“Take off your shirt.”

“What? No.”

Gold eyes turned on him fully. “It is necessary.”

“I really don’t think the water is deep enough here to swim.”

“We will not be swimming.” The siren snorted, giving a quick sweep of the other. “Although you are just the right size for this to be the perfect height for it.”

If the siren couldn’t potentially rip his arm off with ease, Hongjoong might have smacked him. And really, there was a voice in the back of his head that asked him to do the same, whispering softly. It reminded him of when his mother would soothe him after a nightmare or a fall. He felt compelled to listen and obey. So he did so, sighing and stripping off his shirt. The shoulder protested the action, aching once more. There was more force than he’d been able to exert taking off his shirt and when the veil of material was lifted he found that San had been assisting him.

His expression was the gentlest he’d ever seen it, and maybe a small part of Hongjoong had to admit once again that he was utterly devastating. But it was overshadowed by the churn of his stomach and the urge to run because a _smile_ felt like a warning. That, too, was washed away as the siren’s hands found his face, his own drawing closer. He smelled of saltwater and the sharp tang of fresh blood, and something faint underneath it that he couldn’t name. Thumbs smoothing over skin, calloused and scarred but still gentle.

“Close your eyes; relax. Breathe in. Just feel it.” _Feel what?_ It was the big question, the thing that lingered even as he complied with the instructions given to him.

At first, there is nothing. Nothing but the wind, San’s hands on him, and the rain rolling over his skin. He shivered; he wasn’t sure what out of the three made him do it, but then there was a fourth thing. He’d heard it before, water moving in a way that was almost a whisper. Louder this time. Still not as clear.

His shoulder was - on fire, burning, blazing - his eyes flew open with a cry. And then it was numb, a heavy weight he couldn’t move. Hongjoong pulled back only to be stopped by San, the siren cooing in a voice honey sweet and just as smooth. He felt the rest of him go limp, dropping forward into the waiting arms of the siren. Hands on him again, but patting his head and smoothing down his hair as a feeling so euphoric and foreign came over him, tears mixing with rain. The whispers cleared.

_You’ve saved him; you will save him._

_You know, you knew._

“In the water, we are born and in the water we die.”

He didn’t dare to try to comprehend what it meant, head cloudy as he clutched onto San. His shoulder didn’t hurt. Like the siren had never torn into it out of self-defense. Like flesh hadn’t been parted as easily as a knife through butter. By the time he could form a complete thought, he could only register being carried back to the cabin. His head bumped against the siren’s shoulder, and there was something just beneath the sound of the wind. It took him a moment to realize he was still sobbing.

His body rocked with this intense feeling of otherness, incomprehensible but known to him now. The river, the rain, the siren; a fractured triumvirate. _The water_. What the siren had meant as being real was not the river or the storms or the water involved in both; it was the power it held.

When he was first fully conscious, mind clear and whispers gone, he was in the tub. Partly submerged in the water, he could feel the drag of wet fabric against his hips. A glance down - he believed and he didn’t all at once, but in the sort of disbelief that this was happening to _him_ \- at his shoulder. The skin there was pink, like when a scab is peeled off. The press of fingers there made him wince, the flesh still tender, but it was no more than a sting.

The warm was warm as he bobbed in it, processing. Processing. He blinked, noting the siren’s absence for the first time. Then fingers carded through his hair, eyes fluttering shut. Too tender a moment; his heart jumped, an uninvited thought that this could just be an elaborate trap of his own making. But, then the water was warm and he felt heavy and much too safe for that to be true.

 

They’re a grim procession.

Bodies en masse headed to the only body of water close to their village. Crying children were hushed and the elderly looked on darkly as they passed. Crosses swung and hymns sung. _Marching on to Zion, to Zion._

They moved slow as a school of fish, perhaps no brighter than one. But they followed the lead of a face veiled - slashed out, white-noised to the point that there is nothing to really call it a face - and it turned back to the crowd as they reached the edge of the rocks. Sound muted, like voices coming in from above the surface of water. When he looked up, he realized that was exactly where he was. A floating something looking on as a body dropped, a scream strangled by the rush of water into an open mouth.

Around him are more bodies, hair swimming around faces that could almost be peaceful. The sun filtered through the water shone on their skin, unmarred yet by the waters they had been condemned to. Lengths of rope held them, swaying like sea grass. The dresses clung to their skin, aided by the cords knotted around their arms and legs, posed straight as rails. He might have thought they were just holding their breaths, waiting waiting waiting -

In spite of all he knew, he screamed. The body screamed as the weight landed on the swimming hole floor. Bubbles of air caught the light, flitting up quickly to the surface as the crowd watched on. Waiting waiting waiting -

The body stopped struggling, thrashing dying down to jerks to nothing. The water caressed his face, carrying tears to the surface as he twitched once, twice. His eyes slid shut, the water protesting in its quiet way. _Stay awake a little long, just a little longer_. A futile thing. His hair was not as long as when the other had first seen him, but long enough that the dark strands mimicking the movement of the bodies around him. Waiting waiting waiting -

Hongjoong’s eyes opened, panic flooding him as he gasped for air. The press of something against him almost made him think he was back in the water, drowning ceaselessly. But when he looked to the weight, it was just the siren resting a hand on his shoulder. Limp with sleep. He looked peaceful, the image of him drowning fresh on his mind.

 

He could still hear the water rumbling in his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I may or may not have like lowkey cried like Joong while writing this. 
> 
> Slightly unrelated but! I’m doing an au on Twitter that compliments the story so you can find that on my page and get information on the nerd squad and what they all focus on respectively.


	4. What A Thing to Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been 84 years...i'm so sorry

Hongjoong didn’t really know what to think of Nadia. Or her companion. The man was scarred, bulky to her sleek frame. She wasted little time in diving into her own meal, cutting through greasy steak and eggs with a refinement that fit a restaurant with more stars. They hadn’t exchanged a word other than greeting and the usual pleasantries. Her companion had simply been introduced as Micah and that was the end of it there.

He wondered if that truly  _ would _ be the end of it, because she seemed to have no interest in him otherwise. But then she set her fork down, dabbed at her lips with the grainy napkin before wiping her hands on another as if to rid them of some unseen dirt and looked over at him from across the table. He felt his stomach drop, burrow beyond his feet as she smiled. It wasn’t something that would unnerve anyone else, anyone not suspecting. It was a perfectly nice smile. Crisp, perfect teeth just beneath red lips on unblemished skin. But it was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Those, those were wide brown irises with small pupils staring into him.

He swallowed, tried to return the smile as best he could but he figured it came out half-hearted. She didn’t seem to notice, or care, and proceeded to pull a few sheets of paper out and a notepad. Her expression is all business.

“I am so very glad you reached out to us with your updates.” Her voice is steady, dripping with the appropriate amount of corporate glee. Her words are crisp, not a ‘t’ out of place. Accentless. About as generic as her handwriting as he glanced at it on the page. Perfect in a way that made it look like it’d been printed out. She was a horrific product of a manufactured procedure and he wondered how long she’s been doing this. “Like I said, I will be your point of contact with New World. This is just like case management so that it isn’t filtered through a singular person. I am one of many. But I work well.” Her smile widened.

He didn’t know if he was supposed to say something to that, but he nodded because it was at least some form of response. He’s met countless — okay,  _ not _ countless, per say, but enough people in the diner that this felt odd — others and never was he struck with this much unease about them. Maybe it was the ponytail. It looked like it was ripping her hair out from the root. That had to be painful. But she continued on unperturbed.

“So, in your last report, you said you’d encountered the siren.” He remembered the clink of utensils on plates the first time he brought it up in this diner. It came again. Not quite a standstill, but a weariness that permeated the air. 

“Yes.” He couldn’t remember if he’d been detailed in the report or not. 

“You said you had a sighting. You never went into detail on it.” That cleared that up.

His eyes darted to the seats around them. No way someone didn’t hear. Not with how they had slowed, seemed to wait with baited breath. He licked his lips, considered his words. Anything...insensitive could get him — he didn’t want to think about what it would get him.

“There was...loss of life. I don’t think — it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.” He dared to glance at Micah. “My being there changed things. Complicated them. I think I upset it.”

Everyone around them still watched and waited. Hongjoong supposed that was a good sign; they weren’t all clamoring to kill him. But Nadia seemed unsatisfied with this answer. Her lips didn’t purse and her expression didn’t change any but she looked at him for a beat too long before jotting that down on her notepad. What did she want — detail? Photo evidence? He couldn’t give her either. Specifically not detail because remembering it would just send him right back to the moment and remind him how much he should be afraid of the creature he left home watching Tom & Jerry on his laptop.

“And there has not been any encounter following that incident?”

He flinched.  _ Incident _ . It made it feel like something it wasn’t; someone had died. Someone had been crippled in an instant. “No.”

He thought of Mary in her wheelchair...and her not in it. He didn’t include that because he didn’t know what it was, but it sat there in the back of his mind, brought back with the memory of him standing in the rain with San. Maybe she’d been healed the same way and had to keep up appearances. He didn’t know how that worked and he  _ questions _ but they would have to wait while he answered Nadia’s.

Her displeasure continued, his single word answer recorded like all else. She gestured for Micah to go on and do whatever he was supposed to do and he found that the man was much less delicate about the situation.

Micah cleared his throat, folded his hands on the table. “How many?”

“Huh?”

“How many were killed? One? Two?”

“Two, if you count the deer.”

“So just one? Seems pretty weak from what you sent before.”

Hongjoong paled, fists balling. His coffee cooled by his left hand. “Someone died.”

“Listen, kid, one isn’t the same as two. Deer don’t count. Whatever they were doing, they made a fool mistake and it got them dead. But what matters here is that it’s weak. Can be contained.”

His stomach rolled. They were treating people like numbers. Someone  _ died _ and they were blaming it on his mistake. It had been Hongjoong’s — it had been his  _ fault _ and yet they were blaming the dead man. Was it to make him feel better? He doubted that.

“Yeah, I get it.” The lie was bitter on his tongue. “Is it my turn to ask questions now?”

“Sure.” Nadia sounded distracted. A glance over was clear enough to see that she was; her tablet had appeared on the table and she was scrolling through something. “Go right ahead.”

“Why is he here?”

Micah smiled — all teeth, though there was one molar missing — and Nadia chuckled. “He’s our predator expert.”

“Predator Expert.”

“Yes; been dealing with predators all my life.”

_ Takes one to know one. _

He fell silent. The whole point of him calling her had been to let her know that it wasn’t just the siren but it was all of it. A connection to this town that their being there disturbed. It was like nature running its natural course. They should be spectators — silent spectators — but something told him that neither of them would listen.

“What do you plan on doing with it?” It, like he didn’t already know more about the siren than he’d dreamed he’d know before. The detachment was hard to get out, but it had to be done. “You said I was just supposed to study it, so why do we need a ‘predator expert’?”

Nadia’s smile turned genuine and that unease boiled in him a little stronger. “Oh, honey. You can not just leave a problem like this be. We are here to find a solution, with your help. The more we know about the creature, the easier it will be.”

Maybe he’d made a mistake. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so eager to make that phone call to her, all the way in New York. If he’d known she’d drop everything and get their predator expert to come with her, be here in less than a day, than maybe he would have reconsidered. He glanced at Micah again. The rugged exterior of the man might have been appealing in any other setting but now it just felt wrong. Knowing what he knew and how this meeting was going, neither of them seemed like the sort to want to go into conservation. 

“Do you have any...leads on a solution?”

Micah decided to answer this time around. “If it’s as weak as you seem to be making it out to be, our best bet would be to catch it unaware. Trap it. Nadia here will figure out the logistics of a trap; well-rounded, she is. Once we have it, we’ll go through with the plan, but that’s just a rough overview. We’ll send it back to the ocean, where it won’t do too much damage if we relocate it to a fairly secluded spot.”

“How will it eat?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re taking it away from...a food source; how will it eat?”

“We’ll find some baby seals for it to munch on.” Micah chortled, a sound that felt borderline malicious. Maybe it was. Hongjoong was liking him less with each passing second.

“I can’t think of any more questions I have, and there’s a lot of records I still have to comb through. And interviews. So, if you’ll excuse me.” Hongjoong stood, ready to make his escape. He was close, so close until Nadia spoke again.

“Oh, I heard you have a roommate. From what I understand, you came alone.” She stopped midbite to let this out, fork resting on her plate and speared through an egg. His coffee was left untouched, the last of the steam coming up as the egg yolk ran over her plate.

He shrugged. “Buddy of mine drove up.”

“Ah.” A beat passed. “Well, let’s hope he doesn’t distract you from your work. We’ll be at the bed and breakfast on Acre if you want to meet ahead of the next check in.” Then she smiled that corporate smile and he knew they were done.

  
  


When he got back to the cabin, San was still where he left him. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed as he took in the blaring color of violent cartoons from the small screen of Hongjoong’s laptop. The siren had been enamoured with them from the moment the human had put them on. It started with a cursory exploration through Netflix for something that would keep San occupied when he left. His fascination had piqued at the pink dog named Courage. (“Perhaps he has some tribulations of his own.”)  And from the sound of it, he’d spiraled down to Tom & Jerry. The bonks and sound effects as one of them does something to another and the siren barely seems to register that Hongjong has returned.

The jingle signaling the end of the cartoon sounds and San blinked. Once, hard, then two times right after. Then one final blink belatedly, as if he was trying to get something out of his eyes. It made him seem softer than he was, normal — almost. Teeth gnawed at his bottom lip before he reached blindly for looked suspiciously like a limp mouse. A soft hum left him, mouse dead weight between his fingers as his teeth closed in around it.

It was that moment that the siren chose to look away from the screen. A soft squeal left the mouse and then it was quiet as the siren locked eyes with Hongjoong. He swallowed, then smiled and Hongjoong would claim strongly that his heart didn’t flutter. He’d deny thinking that the crooked cuspids and elongated canines that greeted him as the other grinned were appealing in their own way. It’s as crooked a smile as it can get, teeth mimicking their shark appearance, but it makes something bubble in him to know that it’s a smile directed at him.  _ Again. _ As if he needed to remember the moment in the rain.

He half expects the other to return to his cartoons, smile still in place. 

“You’ve returned home.” Hongjoong sucked in a breath, nodding before making a beeline for his laptop. “You got a...ding for a message, I presume, while you were out.”

Hongjoong blinked, not sure what he meant for a moment before it clicked as San said, “From something called New World.”

“O-oh, thanks.” He hadn’t shown San enough of how to use his laptop to know how to read it, but maybe he could have picked up on how to do so in the case. And if it was a message from New World, it might very well have been the meeting notes. He wouldn’t put that past Nadia. 

But San went on to talk about something different, smile turning to a scowl and brows furrowing.

“Why do they like the mouse?”

“What?”

“People. Why do they favor the mouse? They are repulsive, disease-ridden creatures that are at best a nuisance.”

“I.” Joong blinked again. “He’s cute?”

“That does not excuse his nefarious behavior. It would only be so much if he were simply dwelling in the house. But he has evaded traps with more dubious traps and I see that not as cute, but.” He paused, glancing down at the screen. “Spiteful.”

There was a twitch to his lips, amusement maybe in his eyes that brooded there a moment before it was gone. “The cat, however, is simply adapting to the changes demanded of him. Doing the task he had been bought for.”

“I see what you mean, but why does this bother you?” Hongjoong slid his bag off his shoulder, plopping it down at one end of the couch as the siren readjusted himself.

San shrugged, staring blankly at the screen now. “I sympathize with him.”

There was probably something to it; Hongjoong had gotten used to ranting about subtext in cartoons from Yunho. Which wasn’t surprising since he read into the subtext of canine behavior, among other things. He shrugged off his jacket, sweat rubbing up against the back of his neck from where it had soaked into the collar. His limbs felt sticky and damp, but not as much as when he’d first made the the trek into camp. Progress.

“Is this what you’ve been doing while I was gone?”

“Pardon?”

“Watching cartoons.”

“While you were at your appointment? Yes.” His gaze flickered down to the snacks lined up for him. Mice, corralled and pliant. What a treat. “I stopped to hunt a bit.”

There was another beat of silence as Hongjoong got himself settled. The soft track of the classic Looney Toons opening halted as San breathes out. It wasn’t quite a sigh and the push of it between his lips makes it not quite a whistle. “New World sounds familiar.” The hairs on the back of Joong’s neck rose. Four simple words. He felt a little like he’d been caught cheating. Except, he was potentially selling the other out to a questionable organization. “I might have encountered another siren who has had some interaction with them.” 

“Another siren?” Hongjong turned, brows raised and dinner plate eyes. “You know another siren in the area?”

“We don’t talk often. Or much at all. I stay to myself.” The siren shut the laptop. “And she to herself.”

“Can — can you take me to her?”

San blinked. The same triple blink as before; one hard, two soft. “It would not be wise.”

“I don’t have very many wise ideas.”

“Taking you there would be difficult.”

“We can borrow the car from Robert.”

“I don’t know how to direct you to her grotto outside of the water.”

“You can use your connection to it, can’t you?”

There was silence another moment. San pursed his lips, turned away. Hongjoong couldn’t see whatever he might have done, but there was the crack of knuckles as the other turned around and issued, “Fine.”

All the energy had been drained from him in that meeting and coming back to the cabin surged forward and propelled him over to the siren. It was entirely without meaning to — heat of the moment — but he was crowding the other’s space with the excitement of a six-year-old being told they were going to Disney World. Arms wrapped the other, hugging him close. 

“Thank you, thank you —”

A snarl broke through the litany of praises. The tense coil of muscle as teeth are slotted over his throat and Hongjoong realizes his mistake. As uncomfortable as he had been with San, so had the siren been with him. Or, alternatively, he’d just closed in on the space of a predator as if he were his best friend. Careless. He wondered if San could feel his pulse under his teeth. He probably wouldn’t get an answer, but the other drew back, brows furrowed and eyes wide. They stood in silence a moment longer, Joong a deer in headlights and San the very confused driver.

“Let us not do that again.”

“Agreed.”

 

The sun streamed through the car window, peeking up through the trees as Hongjoong drove. The pair had agreed to leave early to have a substantial amount of time in the chance that they got lost. It was still dark when they left, and now the sun drew up over the horizon to shine down on them as they went. No — he’d not say that the siren beside him in the passenger seat was near ethereal. The wind pushing his hair back, hand out the window as he claimed to be feeling for the water. His brows knit together as he turned to look at Hongjoong, who looked back to the road immediately. 

Maybe it was because he was around him so often, but it was hard  _ not _ to notice how absolutely stunning San was. Perhaps it was just another siren trick, but it was working. Mesmerizing. He swallowed, keeping his eyes on the road despite feeling the siren’s on his. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it wasn’t easy, either. It was broken only by bits of songs when they managed to get into range of a signal and San’s directions. Vague directions, Hongjoong might add, but it made sense given they weren’t following a GPS.

The other cars on the road petered out until it was just them, the paved highway giving way to dirt road. The bit of asphalt left was damaged and weeds grew in the cracks.

“Stop here.” 

Urgency in his tone, San pulled his arm back in. Hongjoong slammed down on the brakes hard enough for them to jerk forward. It was fortunate there was no one on this strip of road. They’d only just stopped, but San wasted no time in hopping out of the car. The grass was about as high as his knees as he waded further into the sea of green, fists clenched as he strode forward. There was an edge to his voice when he called for Hongjoong, making him move a little faster as he locked up the car and raced after the siren.

Out in the open, he could feel the disquiet. No birds, no insects. Just the rustling of the grass as they drew closer to their destination. The trees came upon them quickly, branches smacking into their arms as they popped up. In any other instance, Hongjoong would fear that they were getting lost, but San moved with too much purpose.

“Something is wrong.” Each word was hissed out, fingers coiling around Joong’s forearm just as the sound of water running reached his ears. 

The stillness was wrong. It was the same sort of breath-holding that had accompanied the first time Joong had seen San. It was the sort of waiting for something to happen. The grip on his arm tightened, fingers pressing bruises into skin. Pain shot up it, a squeak leaving him and distracting San just as he’s swept away.

If he’d been paying attention, maybe he would have heard it. The hiss, the way twigs underfoot had snapped so quickly. Instead he felt his legs being swept out from under him by something  _ solid _ and the back of his head kissing the ground like a long lost lover. Then being dragged forward, San’s hand still around his arm as he was wrenched forward. 

Snarls, the clack of teeth snapping together; it replaced bird song and the buzzing of bees as the pair were pulled towards the water. His vision danced, unable to focus on one thing before he toppled into the water with San. The fear was immediate.  _ Out! Out! _ Every part of him screamed it, the only coherent thought he could string together as he made for the water’s edge. Or maybe that was San yelling at him to get out.

He clambered up the dirt bank just in time for something to slam into it. A tail, ridged and spiked and scaled, lifted out of the water as another hiss sounded. It slapped down into the water, a creamy white against the murky surface of the water. He blinked, scrambling away from the water. 

Hongjoong really should have anticipated this. That the siren — or whatever this was — wouldn’t be so inviting of others in her territory. San was still in the water, human as the days before he’d faced his watery transformation. A fresh set of claw marks rested just above his collarbone as the other’s siren’s head surface. Pale white hair and skin. The two stared each other down before San dove under.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before they surfaced again. Stillness, and then a violent burst of movement. San’s teeth dug deep into her shoulder, hers deep in his arm as tails tangled and then they were under again. The soft green of the water was tainted red, more so with every moment they surfaced. The female siren surfaced first once, turning San over in a spiral. More snapping, more snarling and growling — there was a rumbling at one point, even.  Until it was still and San pulled himself up on the dirt bank and she onto a log.

It was only then that Hongjoong took note of the legs. She had a set of back legs set high up on her tail, used it to climb up onto the log. The skin at her neck looked leathery and sagged forward some. Claw marks — from San, no doubt — bled slowly from her back. But she was smiling. Grinning from ear to ear as she stared over at San, tired.

He did not return the smile, but the harshness in his gaze had softened some. His clothes, or what remained of them, were in tatters around his fin and tail. There was no salvaging them. Hongjoong grimaced at the idea of having to go thrifting for more clothes. Not a helpful one as San pulled himself fully out of the water, a scowl settling over his lips.

Laughter, throaty and deep, sounded from the log as the siren  _ laughed. _ Like what she’d just done had amused her. She rested her head on the log, still laughing away. A soft wheeze before she spoke.

“Oh,  _ pup _ , you should have seen the look on your face!” She wiped an imaginary tear from her eye, mimicking the expression San had worn before. “And your human friend — I’ve never seen someone that small swim so fast. He was like one of those little rats jumping ship.” She threw her head back, howling as she slipped off the log and back into the water with a splash.

“That wasn’t  _ funny _ , Meldive.” There was no bite to his words, water dripping from his hair as it hung over his eyes. Unamused was one word for his face as he watched the other siren swim  closer. Hongjoong shifted weight from one leg to the other, pain radiating dully at the back of his skull. “You could have killed him — and me.”

“But I didn’t.”

“ _ Meldive. _ ”

“Oh, relax, puppy; I’m old enough to have some control.” Closer now, the siren — Meldive — propped herself up against the embankment and wrung the water from her hair. A pointless action, but one she did with care before turning large green eyes onto Hongjoong. They bore into a moment, something like sadness in them before she turned her attention back to San. “And he’s too pretty to kill right off the bat. Wouldn’t you want to play with your food if it looked like that?” Her smile sent a chill down Hongjoong’s spine.

His response didn’t come in words, but of him throwing himself at the other siren. San wasted no time in dragging her down, teeth finding a home in her shoulder once more in the same spot they had found purchase in. Water kicked up, far enough that it further drenched Hongjoong even as he took another step back.

When they surfaced again, Meldive was laughing yet again. “My! You’ve grown. Are all you shark boys like this, I wonder.” This time, she held him at bay, hands locked firmly together in a battle of strengths. They seemed on equal footing until San broke away, hissing. Meldive leaned into the water, and Hongjoong watched as the water vibrated around her throat, carrying the rumble he’d heard before further into the air like a challenge.

Her amusement soon faded, back to Hongjoong as she gazed over at San. “To what do I owe this visit, San? Because you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. And it’s out of the mating cycle.”

It was Hongjoong that spoke this time, drawing her attention to him. “We need your help.”

“My help?” A brow rose — at least he thought it did; her hair was pale enough to blend with her skin.

“San said that you might.” He swallowed, hands wringing water from the hem of shirt as something to occupy them. “He said that you would know something about this organization. Called New World? Does that ring any bells?”

The shift in her mood was immediate. Eyes widening just before she lunged forward, closing the gap faster than he could process. The grip on his ankle was tighter than San’s had been on his arm as she pulled him into the water. His head met the ground once more, nails digging into the mud too late for purchase before he was pulled under. She held him there, until it felt like his lungs were going to burst. He pulled fruitlessly at her hands, claws sinking into his collarbone. Tendrils of red drifted up where nail broke skin, staining the water around him. He opened his mouth to scream, bubbles of air rushing out as water rushed in. Black dots spotted his vision and he could hardly register that he was back above water.

Somewhere behind him Meldive was hissing. There was San, but he was lost underwater. Distant and muffled. Broken bits of the conversation bubbled towards him as he turned onto his back after attempting to empty all the water from his system. His limbs felt heavy and weak and he couldn’t have been under for more than ten seconds — and yet.

It was still quiet, still above him. The trees didn’t move, the birds didn’t fly. His ankle throbbed, a pulse against the lethargy seeping into him as he wheezed out a breath. 

“Hongjoong, stay awake.” He blinked, eyes attempting to find the source of the voice. He knew it was San. Where had he gone? “Don’t go to sleep.” He was tired. But he forced himself to sit up as his eyes slipped shut.  A pat on his cheek, then another. 

“I almost drowned.” It was all he could manage as his eyes opened again. He found San cradling him (again) and Meldive on the other end of the grotto. His vision might have been totally shit at the moment, but he could tell that she was glaring at him. “What did I say?”

“It would seem she knows a fair amount about this New World that you do not.” His words are hard, and Joong’s brows furrowed as he slowly looked up at the other. More cuts, oozing blood that so dark it could have been black. 

“You’re hurt.”

“It will heal.” He turned his attention from the drifting mortal to the impudent siren on the rocks. “Meldive, he does not  _ know _ .”

“They never know. Never, never.” She, too, was injured, if the undertone of pain was anything to go by. “They never know until they do and then we lose something  _ again _ .” She curled into herself, away from the pair.

“Hongjoong, can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

Hongjoong nodded. The siren frowned but didn’t press further, focused instead on pulling the human further up the bank with him. It took time, but eventually the haze cleared and he could breathe a little easier. There was still a wet cough knocking around his lungs. But his mind was clear and he could see Meldive openly weeping. Hear her, too.

A wrenching sound that was more of a moan than a sob, punctuated by the slap of her tail on the rocks or the water or whatever was close. Pressure around his ears, a force pushing on them to block out sound and — she was singing. Just one drawn out note after the other. San might have been closer to crushing his skull. He could just barely see him mouth the words,  _ don’t listen _ , before he was going to console the other siren. Or doing some version of it.

He felt sick, wrong. Every part of him shook, trembling not from the cold. His teeth chattered as San pressed a hand over her mouth, silencing her as she struggled. Where she had seemed so large before, she was small as he held he still in his grip. She stopped struggling and they toppled into the water again. Her singing had died into sobbing as they floated close.

Angry. He didn’t know what New World done, but he was reminded of Micah and his toothy grin. His smug explanations. “What did they do to you?” His voice was hoarse, the question croaked out.

Eyes red, she looked at him. Past him, really, at something else. Someone else? “You should keep your human safe. They wouldn’t hesitate to deal with him, too. Just like they did with Arthur.”

Hongjoong had missed something. Maybe while he was half-dead to the world trying to catch his breath. “They killed someone? For what?”

“They don’t want to study us, little one.” Her voice was hollow. “We’re a prize. And when you want a prize badly enough, you’ll do what it takes to get it.”

His stomach churned. He remembered the way Micah had written off a death like it was simply a number, a drop of water in the ocean. Because they’d done all of this before. Or tried to. Hongjoong turned over and vomited in front of his siren audience. They said nothing, the quiet filled with his gagging and his own tears as his throat burned.

When he had finished, Meldive spoke again, voice lighter. “I would say not to dirty my water, but it won’t be mine for much longer.”

“What is your meaning?” Did San sound scared? Worried? Hongjoong was still hunched over, curling into himself as he caught his breath. 

“This help comes with a price, as all things do.” She chuckled, mirthless and short. “My price is to give me back to the water.”

_ In the water we are born and in the water we die. _

“I’m old and tired, puppy. I’m not hungry as I used to be and we both know that between the two of us there is only one surplus hunter.” Meldive’s lips curled up, maybe into a smile. He was propped up on his elbows now. “And I think I would like to join Arthur and my children.”

It went quiet, still like everything around them. But Meldive smiled on, seemingly.  “Oh, but don’t think I don’t know how I want this done. You know I’m older than you, even, and I think that warrants me some privileges.” Pushing away from San, she swam to one end of the grotto. Disappearing beneath the surface before popping up near a raised mound. It had looked like nothing more than dead grass and mud piled up, but she dug through it and pulled something loose. Round, pale; an egg. 

“Is that — is that what I believe it to be?” San’s brows furrowed as his fingers pressed into the dirt of the embankment.

Meldive smirked, brow raised. “Why, yes, it is. I always told you I kept my thoughts in a safe place. You’ll know what to do with it, I’m sure.” A light that could only be described as nefarious shone in her eyes. “And I did include everything one would need to know of your time here. Even our first coupling.”

The color drained from San’s face at that, but he didn’t respond. Hongjoong’s brow rose. He was quick to capitalize on the distraction from the inevitable, even if momentarily.

“You two were…”

“Mates?” Meldive completed the question, smirk pulling down slightly. “Far from it. But when you have a female bigger than a male in an enclosed space, the magic of our kind has a penchant for being particularly cruel. San makes for quite the pretty young lady.”

“I would appreciate us moving on from this.”

“Do you truly wish me dead like that?” It was meant to be a joke, but San hissed, turning away. The tension of the moment returned full force.

He took the egg and passed it onto Hongjoong without a word. Hongjoong might have wondered what that had meant he wasn’t fixated on the small pulse he felt beneath his hands. He wasn’t sure if this was part of being a siren — he’d always thought that maybe they forgot a part of themselves — or if this was something else.

“If it is a sea witch’s death you want, I’m not entirely certain I can give it to you.” San’s voice was small, soft. Almost as soft as it had been with him in the rain, but different. “I do not think—”

“Oh, hush, puppy. You were a witch long before I was; that gives you the right.”

It felt private. Like he was looking in on something he shouldn’t. Gaze dropped to the grass, he listened as water splashed about and tails slapped against water. Their voices faded into a dull murmur as he focused on the way the egg pulsated in his hands. Symbolic, really; something living within it but not truly alive. Memories of the soon to be gone. He swallowed. Humans could do this in their own way. He wondered if that man had ever had a chance to do the same. Would his mother do it for him? Put together a memorial of the son she’d lost because someone — him — had made a careless mistake?

A cry snapped him out of his reverie. In the middle of the grotto were the two sirens. Meldive gurgled, her back to Hongjoong. She fell back and was still, an inky black substance seeping into the water. San tipped his head back and once more Hongjoong watched flesh disappear down his maw. The siren slipped beneath the water, pulling other’s corpse down with him as the blackness spread throughout the water.

When San surfaced again, it was quiet and the entire grotto had darkened. As if covered in a layer of soot. Somewhere not far off, a bird chirped.

  
  


Watching San in the following days was a feat. The vacancy in his eyes never left. He would need to be reminded to eat — something he hadn’t expected to be possible. How strong a bond had they had? Hongjoong hadn’t felt the urge to try figuring out the egg. Looking it at it did no more than remind him of thee way Meldive’s eyes had been unseeing staring up at the empty sky before San had pulled her corpse down to the depths.

He blinked. They were three days out from the visitation and it had been three days spent corralled inside. San had been on edge, fidgety at first. But it’d faded into a sort of stupor that made him seem more mechanic, less ruled by the few emotions Joong had seen him exhibit. But there was something else that Hongjoong had noted. San had carried back with him some scutes from Meldive’s corpse. They were pristinely white, as if time had been taken to clean them off. 

It might have gone unnoticed if San didn’t stare at them often, gaze far off. Joong didn’t know how to console him, so he supposed he could just distract him. That was how he had come to the thought of running a sort of test. Or maybe this was meant to be a distraction for both of them. San from his grief, and Hongjoong from the suspicions and paranoia brooding within him.

“We should go out.”

It comes out a lot less certain than he intended it to sound. A tentative suggestion of a child made to an adult. Perhaps even asking for permission to leave their nest of emotions not fully processed. San glanced over at him, face washed over by a series of emotions before he lifts a shoulder in a shrug and turns his attention back to the mice he’d been playing with. They were long dead, pulled into some semblance of motion with their tails. Hongjoong’s nose scrunched up. Did he have to do that there on the table?

“We could go out to eat.”

San shrugged again, pausing only to switch from one mouse to another. Fingers balled into a fist and gaze not quite seeing. 

“We could talk. About Meldive.”

A pause, but no other response. Nothing verbal. It felt like he was talking to a brick wall, putting words out into the universe that would never be heard. He swallowed, mouth stuffed full of imaginary cotton. It shouldn’t be so hard to get these words out, but he feels his throat close up with each try.

“You have to go out.”

Did his voice waver? Probably, but he tried to remain firm. Plant his feet and seem mildly authoritative. The siren did his triplicate blink as he looked up at the other.

“Would you have me be part of your world?” The siren’s head tilted, gaze steady. “Shall we also discuss over a meal the situation with the organization that has sent  _ you _ to scout me out as if you were an enemy spy?” He didn’t miss a beat, blinking again. “We never did talk about that, did we?”

Any hope that Hongjoong had had with San even responding was lost as he spoke. His shoulders sagged, wincing at the mention of his involvement. “It’s not like I knew what they had planned, or are planning. I just thought —”

“The thoughts of others is what got me to this point.” The siren stood, mice forgotten now. “But if it so pleases you, we can go into town. I have not the faintest idea what could be so appealing to you there, but I suppose I will learn.” The bite was gone, but it still had some edge to it that Hongjoong felt.

“I’ll. I’ll put something together for you to wear.”

It was, in a way, progress. He’d gotten San out of his stupor and pushed him into some sort of activity. It did quell any other ideas that would have put him in the way of the siren’s less than maintained emotional expression. But it was only the bare minimum and more of a selfish desire that made his stomach roll. He’d tell the other once they were dressed.

Speaking of — he hadn’t thought that the other would comply with his suggestion to go out, and now he was at a loss for what he might wear. Anything he might have deemed appropriate for a night out might not get the same reception it would somewhere else. Jitters; they were getting to him as if this was supposed to be a date.  _ A date _ . It wasn’t — far from it; just an intervention before San got bored enough to try eating him.

He would treat it as if he was going out with a friend. Something he would do with Seonghwa or Yunho or Jongho. Which was how he’d ended up in a button-up blue shirt and whitewash jeans. Hongjoong would deny very strongly that he had a ten minute debate about how many buttons he would leave open. That he checked himself out in the mirror for another five minutes trying to decide if he wanted to add jewelry into the mix.

San’s clothes — he spent less time on. Something tells him he’d be able to wear anything, pulling out a pair of jeans ripped more than intact and a sweater from his own pile of clothes. Simple, effortless; it should be enough but the look of displeasure on San’s face at the sweater has him rethinking things. Enough that he gave the other a black shirt as an alternative and nearly choked when the siren rolled up the sleeves further.

(  _ “Where did you learn that?” _

_ “One of the pictures on your phone while I was playing that bird game. Or was it the one with all the photography? It was bright and rainbow-colored.” _

_ He makes a note to keep San from wandering through the recesses of his phone and prays he didn’t see more than that.  _ )

They choose a tavern closer to the woods, backed up from the rest of town. The tradeoff in choosing The Diver was that there were already people leering at the pair. Hongjoong stepped closer to San, flinching when bare skin met colder flesh, fingers brushing against the fabric of the pale sweater that he’d insisted on (mostly for his own safety and partly for the event that they would need to hide the numerous scars lacing his arms, including fresh ones from their visitation to the grotto). San stared back, impassive and calmer than Hongjoong had expected, but he’s careful in maneuvering them to as far back a table as he can.

The pawnshop owner seems to moonlight as a patron at the tavern, raising a glass and a brow at the pair before returning to her drink. From the corner of his eyes, he sees San tensed and fidgety. His calm shattered, or at least partly, as he glances at the pleather seating before sliding into the tight booth table. Close enough to the restroom, but unfortunately too far from the exit to make much of a difference if they needed to run.

There’s an upside to this, though: they’re far from the center of town. Far from Nadine and Micah and it gives Hongjoong space to breathe while taking in more of the locals. Though, he made a note that maybe he should avoid some of these particular locals. They don’t hold back, a scattered assortment of reactions to the pair. Mostly stuck on San and the markings trailing his skin as he squinted down at a grimy laminated placard that was supposed to serve as a menu.

“Is this what you intended when you said we should ‘go out’?”

Hongjoong started, tensing in his seat. Not quite used to this sort of reaction, he’d forgotten that it might not be the same for his siren friend.  _ Friend _ . Not exactly the right word for what San was at this point. “No, it wasn’t.” San hummed.

“Anything I can get you boys? Can’t serve drinks to minors, though so—”

“We’re legal.” Smile forced, he makes to fish out his ID from his to tight pockets only to be stopped by the waitress’s gravelly laugh.Why did everyone sound like they chainsmoked half the day and washed it down with cheap whiskey?

“S’alright. Don’t hurt yourself trying to get it out of your pants.” She chuckled again like it was a bad joke she was obligated to laugh at, but he assumed that was just how she always laughed. “Don’t get many of you around here and you look like you stopped aging at fifteen.”

His ears burned, but now it’s his turn to laugh like he’s supposed to. Well aware of San’s gaze on him, he looked back at the menu. “We’ll, uh, take two steaks. One medium well and...rare.”

The waitress raised a thick, blocky brow that’s clearly been drawn in as he continues. “And for drinks can I get an Old Fashioned and an Arnold Palmer.” Order completed, all he wanted was for the brunette to move on so maybe he could get a minute to breathe before another backwoods racist scooted up to them. Not even after she’d nodded and left, he can hear a group only a few tables over howling with laughter and gesturing crudely. About what, he didn’t want to know.

“Thank you.”

“Huh?” Blinking, he turned his attention fully back to the siren. “For what?”

“The food. I cannot...I didn’t get much use out of reading.”

Oh.  _ Oh _ . He wasn’t sure if was shame coloring the other’s cheeks, but it’s a pretty blush settled over San’s cheeks as he glared down at the sorry excuse for a menu in front of him. He tucked it back into place, smoothed the napkin in front of him. Anything to not look up.

“Nothing wrong with that.” He doubted that even some of the patrons in here could read. “You’re welcome.”

It was only the second time he’d seen the other’s face contort in any fashion to be a smile, but he finds he likes it. A dimple puckers into existence and Hongjoong has to resist the urge to openly scream, settling for an internal dying at the sight of it. He knew better than to think the smile was really for anything other than the meal awaiting them that is going to come right out Joong’s personal funds, but his stomach coils up all the same.

He doesn’t like it. Okay,  _ maybe _ he does — but his brain is firing off mixed signals. One part reminded him that this could all just be his fascination mixed with some sort of siren pheromone released upon him. The other part screeched on about the more irrelevant things. About, particularly, the sweet smile that lingered as San busied himself with observing his surroundings. It doesn’t match the jagged scars on his face, or the new ones formed near his collarbone.

“San, how old were you?” He was curious. He’d been quick to defend the other in being of legal drinking age, but he had to remember that they were from vastly different time periods.

The siren does that triplicate blink —  _ it’s not cute _ . “Twenty.”

“You were younger than I am.” He wasn’t sure what to do with this information, other than feel the weight of what that implied.

The conversation died there for a moment. San’s smile had dropped and his fingers played with the gigantic hole in his jeans. His knees were out in full display on either leg and Hongjoong might have admired how nice his legs looked in them. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it isn’t comfortable. Not with everything they have sitting between them, unspoken as of yet. And he made to pipe up about it as chair legs scrape back and the ice in glasses on the waitress’s tray clink. There were other drinks on it, but theirs is set before them hastily with a “Your food’ll be out shortly.”

The tension remained when she walked off, but there was something else now. The group he’d avoided paying attention to had moved closer and it was clear that they were a bit more attentive to the pair than they need be.  One grizzled older man in the group said something, the others laugh. It wasn’t a new sensation, the unease that settled in his stomach. It had been present all during his high school years. He hadn’t realized he’d gripped his glass so hard until he felt the ache in his knuckles.

Another burst of laughter and then San’s attention was trained on the man. The other group seemed to realize this. There couldn’t have been more than five of them, and maybe San could take them, but Hongjoong didn’t want to risk trying to see if he could. But he’d long since used up any sort of luck he might have had.

Their waitress was back with their orders, plopping it down in front of them. Hongjoong had to switch the steaks after she left, not trusting his voice to say it. Not with those men so close. One of them looked younger than he, but he wasn’t remarking on that.

He knew good and well that they meant for him to hear it. “...can handle all that meat.” He didn’t know — didn’t really care, either — what the first part of that was but it was a joke made at his expense. Their expense. A glance over to San; he was much too occupied with his steak. Teeth dug into bleeding meat, even with the presence of a fork and knife. The siren let out an appreciative hum, brows furrowing slightly. His tongue slipped out to lick up a stray drop of juice from the corner of his lips, and Hongjoong swallowed hard.

“I’m surprised they didn’t order one of those twink drinks.” Hongjoong stared down at his plate. The meal wasn’t as appetizing anymore. Mechanically, he poured steak sauce over it. 

“I’m surprised you could see past the shrubbery growing on your face.” San’s voice was easy, unimpressed. He cut out another bite from the steak, not looking away from Hongjoong. When had he been looking at him?

The man doesn’t expect a response. Maybe that was what stopped him short, made him reconsider. Hongjoong hopes that is the case as San takes a bite too calculate to be natural. Not a bluff, but a show of power. Dominance. The slide of his teeth off his fork, the metallic scrape of the action. The siren chews slow, not menacing, but the dull look in his eyes wasn’t inviting further discussion. Good sense; the man backed off, waving off his buddies as they call him a coward in not those same words and San sips at his drink.

The siren grimaced, brows knitting together. “Do they not have mead?”

“Mead?”

A shrug. “My preferred beverage. Unless — is it not something that exists anymore?”

“No, it exists.”

Hongjoong found he didn’t mind having to call the waitress over again as another vestige of a smile graces San’s lips. He doesn’t mind having to do it again, to the point that he asks that they bring a large pitcher. The rational part of him worried; what would a  _ drunk siren _ get him? Dead. Dead and with several other corpses that he wouldn’t have to deal with because he would be among them. He watched the other neatly polish off both their meals, devouring the sad excuse for dinner rolls plopped down on their table, unevenly heated up. Watching him eat would have made it more appetizing if not for the way he seemed to never be satisfied.

But it was before the last dregs of the mead landed in his glass that San claimed he was growing tired of sitting so far from the human. “I would not be able to show you as well.”

San had already shown him things — the rain and the grotto still sit heavy on his chest like bricks — and he wasn’t sure he was mentally prepared for more. But as the other sidled up next to him on the seat, the dip of it curving to meet the new weight, it took a turn. The siren’s head dipped dangerously close to Hongjoong’s shoulder. It hovered there, not quite touching, but his attention is called away.

Fingers extended, the siren stared down the sweating glasses at their table, ice clinking as it melted in their drinks. The water rolled down the glass, slow like it’s being coaxed to the table. It collected there on the varnished faux wood, forming a stable ball until it wasn’t a ball anymore. A small, watery man tips his hat to Hongjoong before he’s joined by another figure. He almost missed the small bubbles.

Giggles echoed in his ears as there’s pressure on his shoulder. The bubbles floated up, popping not far from his face. He wasn’t sure what exactly this was supposed to be. A show of power? A drunken display? The siren hadn’t shown any signs of being someone inclined to show off like this. Perhaps the other, less drunk show of power was something else. It’s spectacularly different from what he’d been used to seeing from the siren. If he had been composed before — including the eating a cat fiasco — then how much worse would he be now?

“I was not born here.” It was soft, almost like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be heard or not. “When we came with the boat, we lost our father. Fell overboard and the sea took him. He was ill; we mourned, but thought it best because he would not have survived the remainder of the journey.”

Hongjoong considered where this was going. He knew — was shown really — how the story ended for San. Maybe not entirely how it had begun, but inferences could be made with the context clues given. “We were never welcome, I do not think. But we were safe, for much of our time here. My family was not...we had little with us when we came and even less as the days drew on. The villagers thought us strange, but then again, they thought the natives stranger and that was our grace.”

He took another long sip of his drink, the swallowing audible, like he was a fish out of water. The ice clinked again in the glass, his eyes darting over at someone that Hongjoong wasn’t paying much attention to. His own drink was mostly forgotten, though he’d finished off the first and then decided to try San’s. It was something else, but he’d downed one cup of it at the siren’s encouragement and now a second was half empty. And it went straight to his head.

Or, at least, that was the excuse he came up with for how intently he was staring at the other. Fascinated, entrances; he hadn’t looked up from the siren since he’d started talking. Focused on the way his cheeks were now a soft rosy pink, the glazed over look in his eye and how far away he seemed. Off in another time, but in the same place. It didn’t elicit the same feeling as when he watched those old war documentaries with veterans speaking about what had happened in the area where it had happened. For one, they weren’t pretty young-looking men, and two, they weren’t sirens.

“I must be boring you; I apologize.” His smile was small, knocking Hongjoong from his stupor. He would have given some sort of reaction to this if the siren’s hand didn’t lunge out to stop someone from taking the almost-barrel of mead from their table.

It was the same man from before, come back for something else. Maybe he’d downed enough liquid courage to try again. “Relax; you don’t need this.”

“Is that really something for you to decide, sir?” The siren was the most alert he’d seen him in the last five minutes. Had it been five minutes? It could have been longer. It felt like longer. 

“You didn’t look like you were finishing this yourself. How’s this: it’ll be on me, ladies.”

That didn’t sweeten any kind of deal. If anything, Hongjoong feared what the siren might do as his expression darkened. That could never be a good sign of anything. He swallowed, watched as San stood. There was only a slight discrepancy in their heights, with San a little under, but that likely wouldn’t deter him.

“Listen, son, you ought to just sit back and relax with your boyfriend. Enjoy the night. Don’t start anything.”

Maybe the man should have taken his own advice. The siren tipped his head back and with little time to react, the front of his head collided with the man’s chin. His jaw snapped shut and he stumbled back as his hand flew to the spot, eyes dinner plate wide. The shock was soon overpowered with anger and a further insult to the man’s pride as he was taken down with all the expertise of a hunter.

It was only a handful of seconds, but soon San had gotten the man on his back and face bloodied. The others in his group came to his aide but were fended off with relative ease. He thought he heard someone yelling about the cops and that’s when the panic set in. San could — and likely wouldn’t bat an eye at doing so — kill all of these men. There were more than enough weapons in the room for him to do so and he was armed with some himself. He almost put them to use, biting into the arm of someone attempting to lift him from the first man. A howl of pain filled the room and it was utter chaos as chairs were picked up and bottles smashed.

The glow of golden eyes as they surveyed the room, maybe looking for an escape, maybe thinking about the next target, was the most concerning. The others would notice and then that would truly be it for the siren. Hongjoong locked eyes with him for a moment, blood sprayed upon his face. His expression morphed from the manic, frenzied look it had before to something calm and foreboding that sent a shiver down the other’s spine. In a matter of moments, he’d gone from being a giggling, ethereal creature to  _ this _ . A hand raised, knuckles split and bloodied, curled into a fist to deliver yet another blow.

And then he tensed up, body rocking back with the current of the taser. Jaw clenched, limbs pulled in. Hongjoong watched the siren go down mutely as others backed off him and the officers called in approached with a pair of handcuffs. Then another approached him and it faded into white noise as San’s eyes fluttered shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh hi yes, this is late and that's entirely on me I'm so sorry. you can go ahead and yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/fromtheseouls) and i'm open to questions or more yelling on my [cc](https://curiouscat.me/remeremerem). thank you for reading!


	5. If We Were Made Of Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sobs* finally

“What have you done?”

He started, glanced from whatever it was he’d been looking at. There were many faces, but only one voice had sounded. Familiar. But tinged with the heavy pangs of disbelief and hurt. Maybe suspicion. He wasn’t sure what it was; he couldn’t use faces to match it either. Not until one came close, the burning sun no longer shrouding it in shadow. His mother; he should have been able to recognize her anywhere but the shock had not lifted. Shock? Of what? There was something he was supposed to be looking at, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Don’t look.” Why shouldn’t he look? His stomach churned and it felt like he’d swallowed cotton.

He jerked out of her touch until her arms wrapped around him firmly and rocked him. Hot tears dropped onto his skin as she cried, rocking them both back and forth. What has happened? What has he done? The pull of wanting to look was strong. It almost took him from her embrace, hands useless on his lap as she rocked rocked rocked. 

Soon, there were other hands. More voices. Another familiar one, another face he should know shadowed by the searing sun above. “I should have known.” Ice crept into his veins as the fog of confusion lifted and finally, he looked down. Not at the ground, but at his hands. Hands covered in red so completely, they still dripped the hue. It had been as though he’d been playing in the winepress’ bucket, mashed the bleeding skins of grapes.

They trembled in his sight. Or maybe it was something else. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it to be something else, but he was jostled by the crowd and his mother as she fought to keep hold of him. Before he could utter so much as a word, her fingers pressed in hard enough to bruise his arms as she sought to pull him away, she was silenced with a blow to the head. He watched her drop before pain exploded at his temple and the world darkened.

When Hongjoong opened his eyes, it was to the blinding white of artificial lights. They buzzed softly overhead. His breath stuttered in his chest. Drenched in sweat, it took him a moment to put two and two together to figure out where he was exactly. He wasn’t feeling any better when realization struck. He blinked, groaned at the impending headache that only seemed to amplify the noise. 

He turned his head, only to meet the golden-eyed gaze of the siren almost immediately. It felt like an eternity as they stared each other down. Then, the creature blinked as if he too were just waking.  Sluggishly lifted his gaze elsewhere and the human felt, for a moment, as if he could breathe again. The flutter of his heart against his chest lessened and he sat up, groaning as his vision danced. Too fast.

A grunt, and then he was being passed a cup. It was nudged against him, clear liquid sloshing around in the plastic. When Hongjoong turned his gaze up to whoever it was holding it, he felt less inclined to take it. One of the younger tattooed men; one from last night. He seemed as reluctant to even hand the cup over as Hongjoong was to take it, but also like he wouldn’t just leave it there. Hongjoong took it from him gingerly, careful to avoid knocking digits together, before setting it down beside him. 

They remained in relative silence. San had turned over on his side, away from the other man and Hongjoong. With his back to them, Hongjoong could make out the ridges of his fin buried beneath skin the same way he’d seen them that first morning of them meeting. He stood, and crossed to where the siren lay, aware of the eyes following him as he did so.

“Hey, San. How’re you feeling?” He kept his voice low — for the siren’s sake and his own. The headache had grown and engulfed nearly the whole of the front of his head. An angry, pulsating pain not helped by the flickering of the lights.

The siren shrugged, craning his neck to look at the human. His eyes had melted down to their more human brown, though little flecks of gold remained. “I...ache.” That was to be expected. At his chin was dried blood.

( _ The siren’s body jerks about, not unlike a fish out of water, as the electricity from the taser courses through him. His eyes flutter, but all Hongjoong can see are the whites of them. Blood streams down his chin from his mouth and his jaw remains firmly clenched, just as his fists do where they’re pressed against his chest. _

_ “Turn it off!” _

_ The officer merely looks at him as he struggles to break free from their grasp, eyes narrowing. But he complies after a moment of watching the siren struggle. Soft gurgles leave him and then a single, muffled note. San had started singing, or attempted to when they hit him with the taser, and now he couldn’t stop. _

_ Even as the last volts are pumped into him, San convulses enough that they have to hold him down. Or make some measly attempt just to say that they did. It’s a horrific sight, watching them hold him until he stills, and then still as he tenses all over. He lays there for another minute and he’s  _ too _ still. _

_ “What did you fucking do?” _ )

The siren blinked — the same triplicate, and then Hongjoong knew he was mostly alright — before rolling onto his back. “You look as if you’ve seen a spirit.”

“Uh.” How does he explain that he had just witnessed what might have been a memory? “I was just worried about you.”

He shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be worried about San, because he should be worried about  _ himself _ . That fun little tidbit of what he’d dreamed had left a glaring hole in his seedling theory that San had been falsely accused. That he hadn’t done anything that would have condoned his very public execution. 

This was something he expected, though. Or at least some aspect of it. He had always assumed that he would end up in close quarters with something dangerous. The only thing that had changed was that Hongjoong was technically living with it. Was currently trapped in a jail cell designated at the town drunk tank with it. He rocked back on his heels, nodding to himself. This wasn’t how he had planned for things to go, but this was the risk he took to prove what he knew to be true to everyone else.

San observed him, but said nothing, and maybe the little mental pep talk was what he needed. It wasn’t far off from a whisper when he asked, “San...what did you do?”

At first, he didn’t get a reaction other than confusion. Dark brows furrowing as the siren tried to process what was being asked of him. Then tension as it registered. His nostrils flared and he sat up, legs bracketing Hongjoong. Knelt in front of the siren, he could only move back, but he couldn’t get his feet to move. To at  _ least _ stumble back and away from the siren. He was caught like a deer in headlights. For a quick moment, he thought that  _ this _ would be his end, and all because he’d gotten cocky.

A throat cleared behind them, and the pair looked up to see the sheriff. A thick brow rose in judgment at their positioning. The tattooed man from the bar had turned away.  Heat rose to his cheeks as he finally stumbled back, enough to show that whatever they had thought was transpiring was not.

“I don’t even want to know happened.” The sheriff didn’t seem the least bit impressed with them, rubbing the bridge of his nose with more force than was probably necessary. Whatever lecture he had cooked up had gone to waste when he’d walked in. “I don’t want to hear a  _ thing _ about what you think happened or did happen, but I want you out of here and I don’t want to see you being brought in again.”

Just beyond him, Hongjoong could  _ feel _ the animosity dripping off the siren like water.

“I do not understand why we are here.” The siren tensed, glaring up at the sheriff. “We were harassed by several  _ gentlemen _ in the tavern and I was well within my bounds to defend myself.”

“That’s not the story I was given this morning — but I  _ don’t care _ . Up and out; don’t go thinking too hard about nights out on the town from now on.”

His departure was much the same as his arrival. He turned and left as if that was the end of it. He gestured for the other occupant in the cell to leave as well, and he wasted no time in escaping the animosity of radiating off the siren. Hongjoong felt a distinct urge to join them in their retreat, but something told him that would not be wise with the other so close.

Hongjoong didn’t know what possessed him to do it. Maybe it was another test he wanted to conduct, or maybe it was meant to distract the siren from Hongjoong’s own brewing unease, but he linked his fingers together with the other’s. It made his heart race, for reasons he couldn’t determine. Fear? The other’s hand was warm - a surprise. He’d expected it to be cool to the touch, but at least it hadn’t been as hot as when they’d first met.

Which meant that he should be fine now, and headed back to the water.

Something in him ached at the thought, and Hongjoong dismissed it by pulling the siren up so they could leave. San blinked at him — down; had he gotten taller? — but followed obediently. There was still an air of hostility around him, prevailing even as they left the station. The few possessions that Hongjoong had to pick up were pocketed quickly. He didn’t bother checking his phone, but he assumed that a night without charge had drained its reserves and that he’d only be staring at a black screen. 

Hongjoong wondered how long the other could keep it up. The constant change from calm to angry had to be exhausting, but the siren had existed this way for near four centuries. He swallowed, glancing down at their intertwined hands.  It did not serve as much assurance that the other could turn on him, how gently he held his hand. Careful, like any tighter a grip would break the human’s hand. And it probably could if he were being honest.   

They would need to avoid anything like last night happening in the future. He stopped. What future? His stopping only served to draw attention to himself from the siren, and more from others around them. He could guess why the gazes lingered on their interlocked hands. But he was most concerned about the way San was looking at him.

It was too calm a gaze. It bordered the same look the siren had given him the night before, and it made his stomach flip. Too serene and gentle. Like when he’d stared down the cat moments before it disappeared down his throat. Hongjoong swallowed.

“Let’s go home.”

 

The first thing he did was collapse in bed. San, all but forgotten as Hongjoong got into his own headspace, had lowered himself onto the couch. It was only a passing thought, but he wondered if the siren was still feeling off after the taser. Probably; he doubted he’d ever experienced something like that before.  Hongjoong felt for him — really, in that aspect, he did — but part of him was glad for the chance to breathe.  

Hongjoong needed space to evaluate the situation. At the core of what he was feeling was fear; that was something he thought he knew. And then the rest was fascination. That, he was certain of. But stomach flips and heart skips were all well-documented symptoms of excitement. He’d gotten himself attached. To the human part of San, or what he suspected was still the human part of San.            

But was there truly a human part of San left? He wasn’t an animal; there was sentience there that wasn’t quite the same as a chimp. Hongjoong swallowed, rolled over on the bed. He was too tired to think about it; didn’t want to think about it. He tried to will himself to sleep, screwing his eyes shut. He hoped the darkness would call forth sleep. His mind, though, refused to quiet. Not when there was still the fear of seeing another one of those memories. It brought a new light to the story San had already told him, and an itch to ask for more details. But he doubted the siren would give him any other answers while sober.   

Hongjoong rolled over on his side, squeezing his eyes shut a little harder. 

 

He didn’t know when he’d gotten his wish, but he woke in a daze. His phone chimed beside him and the room was still. Quiet and dark. The river gurgled on beyond the wide glass pane of the room. A new message dinged in and he reached for it. His arm ached; maybe the way he’d slept. His phone nearly slipped out of his hand when it went off again, this time with a notification in his group chat. The messages beforehand all been panicked and wondering where he was. It gave him some comfort to know there were at least three people that would freak out if he suddenly disappeared. Maybe at the hands of the siren he was living with.

Hongjoong patted his cheeks, blinked the remnants of sleep from his eyes as it dawned on him what today was. It was supposed to be their ritual call. He sucked in a breath, throwing back the covers to get his laptop. His steps were hurried as he flitted around the room, trying to make it look semi-presentable, as well as himself. The clothes he’d gone out in the night before were flung onto the floor and he settled back into bed with a comfy set of sweats and a loose shirt that had to be about three sizes too big for him. 

The ringing tone of skype grated at his nerves, leg bouncing in the cross-legged position he had taken on the bed. He’d finished swaddling himself in blankets when the faces of his three friends appeared. Or, well, two; Jongho’s remained blank and indicated mic only.

“Jongho — no video?”

“Too tired to show my face.”

A chorus of hums followed. “Understandable.” “I feel that on every level.” “We stan sleepy babies.”

Yunho and Seonghwa, for some bizarre reason, had opted on using different devices, but within the same space. Hongjoong could catch a glimpse of the side of Seonghwa’s face from Yunho’s phone. Probably propped up as he lounged on the couch. Seonghwa’s face scrunched up as Yunho moved around a bit, affirming Hongjoong’s assumption.

“Alright, nerds. Time to get down to business.”

“You’re saying this as if you yourself aren’t a nerd.”

“Yunho: shut up.”

“Someone clearly didn’t get that dick appointment like I suggested.”

Hongjoong groaned. It was overshadowed by the youngest’s whine of, “Please; I am a  _ child _ . I don’t wanna hear this.”

“You’re most definitely not a child, Jongho.”

“You’re right; I’m not. But, please — can we have one call without you getting on someone about not getting out, you horndog.”

“I am a perfect healthy adult—”

Hongjoong listened, a smile budding on his face. The bickering brought with it a sense of familiarity that he had been lacking in recent days. Reeling from all he’d learned and was learning about the siren that was...somewhere in the house. The thought of not know where the other was should put some kind of distress in his mind, but he couldn’t be bothered. He’d much rather be content listening to his friends argue about something trivial.

“Hongjoong — how’ve you been?  _ Where’ve _ you been? You didn’t answer our texts or calls and your twitter was silent.” Hwa frowned, a sound of indignation echoing from both his and Yunho’s devices. His gaze darted to the other, but he was quick to return his attention to Hongjoong. “You had us worried for a minute there. If you didn’t answer the call, I would’ve started calling the police.”

“That — that might have actually gotten you closer to me than you think.” Hongjoong’s cheeks heated. He shouldn’t be embarrassed — he knows Yunho has done wilder things  _ for a fact _ , and yet.

“What do you mean?”

“I was. I was in jail. Not like —  _ jail  _ jail. But they put me in a drunk tank.”

A gasp. Then — “What did you do?” “Hongjoong, that’s not what I was going for when I said you needed to relax.” “ _ Please _ tell me you did not try to fight someone over an argument about the Little Mermaid again.”

“I— that was  _ one time _ .”

“One time is enough.” Yunho nodded sagely, agreement coming vocally from the other two.

Hongjoong might have wanted to strangle him.

He scrubbed a hand down his face and groaned again, but he couldn’t stop the small smile on his face. He  _ had _ been relaxed — before things went to shit — but it had been a pleasant evening up until that point.  A small smile had settled over his lips and he heard something like a whistle coming from one of the others.

“Wait —  _ fuck yeah _ — was it indecent exposure? Did they throw you in the slammer because you got frisky with someone in public?” Yunho was much too excited about that.

“Gross! No!”

“Disappointing.”

“Whatever; can we not talk about this? Instead, how’re things going, Jongho?”

“Nuh uh, don’t put me on the spot.”

“Don’t like you haven’t been wanting to whine about work for the last two weeks.” Seonghwa was quick to call the other’s bullshit, a grin tugging his lips up.

Jongho sighed, quieted a moment. “Okay, so you see —”

The youngest in the group proceeded to regale them with tales of his desk job. Hongjoong hadn’t expected him to be the first out of them to get one; his money had been on Seonghwa. In fact, he had suspected that the oldest would be the first out of them all to find any sort of stability. Which wasn’t to say that his current situation was far from it. He just worried the oldest of their group would need to worry about placating his own family.

Support had not been heavy on his side, unlike with Yunho. He swallowed, continued smiling. He laughed when appropriate and tried to wade away from the dark waters of his own mind. Sinking into those depths was something he didn’t need. 

“And when I told the other intern, they looked at me like I’d grown a second head or something.” Jongho finished off his story with a scoff, Hwa chuckling and Yunho smiling good-naturedly. But it was the smile he reserved for not quite understanding the joke, but still being supportive. 

“Anyways, what about the dynamic duo?”

“Yunho tried to steal another dog.”

“I didn’t.” The whine in his voice made it hit an octave higher than usual. “It followed me home.”

“You were holding its leash.”

“I didn’t want it to wander off and get lost and then hit by a car!”

“It would have found its way home and you know it.”

“But cars!”

Hongjoong loathed to admit it, but he did have a point. “Cars are dangerous.”

There was a hum of agreeance. It took a moment to register that it had not come from any of the others and when Hongjoong turned, there was San. He startled, looking on as the siren squinted down at the screen. The yelp he let out had alerted the others and their full attention was now on San. 

The reflected image showed only a fraction of his face, but it was enough to paint an unkind picture of him in the grainy pixels. He needed a new laptop. 

“Jesus Christ, San; a little warning next time.”

San frowned. “My apologies. I thought you had heard me enter the room.” His frown deepened. “Perhaps it would be behoove you to not take the Lord’s name in vain, Hongjoong.”

“Uh...who’s that?” Yunho’s gaze was glued to the siren’s face. It looked he might have been paying particular attention to the scars.

He didn’t like the way Seonghwa was looking at him, though. There was a mix of disapproval and concern on his face that would only be followed by questions that reminded him of his grandmother. His lips pursed together and Hongjoong could feel the beginnings of a lecture forming just behind them.

He had to come up with a story; something plausible. Something told him he probably shouldn’t tell them about the fact that he was living with the siren, regardless of how temporary it was. “This is, uh, my roommate.”

“Roommate?” Hwa didn’t sound convinced.

“He, uh, came with the house? Sorta like a groundskeeper, but he lives here, too.”

“Oh, really?” Still not convinced.

The siren, to his credit, remained silent. He’d migrated from sitting on the edge of the bed to moving closer to the human. That wasn’t helping the story, but at the very least, they could get a better look at him. Seonghwa’s eyes narrowed in the small screen, practically radiating distrust through it. Yunho, on the other hand, was about as friendly as he normally was. 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you! Thanks for taking care of the place!” 

San nodded. No smile. Something about that made his heart stutter in his chest and he had to reprimanded himself for taking anything from a simple gesture. “The pleasure is mine, and you are welcome.”

Silence stretched on for a moment longer, awkwardness settling in.  Glancing back to the siren, Hongjoong shrugged. “He’s not much of a talker.” He pointed to either of the small icons of his friends. “This is Seonghwa and that’s Yunho. The one not on video is Jongho.”

“Vi...deo?”

“He’s opted out of showing us his face because he looks crusty from sleep.”

“Hey!”

The siren blinked once, twice; a third hard blink. His expression softened, mostly in confusion. He’d only come to learn of the functions of a laptop recently, but Hongjoong had never showed him the ropes on things like video calls. In hindsight, he’d never thought the siren would have need for it.

He looked down at the laptop again, fingers tracing the keys. He resembled an animal, enamoured with the object in front of him. That might have been enough to forgive the silence that lingered again, before he turned his attention back to Hongjoong. 

“I will leave you to your video, then.” He still sounded unsure of the word, dipping into a question. His weight lifted from the bed and the door clicked shut behind him softly.

Quiet, once more, before — “What the  _ fuck _ was that?”

Hongjoong fumbled for an explanation. “He’s an odd bird.”

“How’d he not know what skype was?” Seonghwa was really going to be digging into this, wasn’t he?

Hongjoong shrugged. “He’s a bit of an old soul and there isn’t much tech in the cabin.”

“Whatever.” Yunho dismissed any more suspicions before they arose. “He’s cute. You should concern him on your quest for dick.”

“I’m not on any quest for dick, Yunho.” His nose scrunched up, but he couldn’t help the smile that spread over his lips. “He is cute, though.”

“Not just cute, but living under the same roof as you.”

“I think  _ you’re _ the one that needs to get laid.”

“I—” Yunho paused, mouth open. “You’re not wrong.”

“Okay, that’s enough, you two. Not in front of the child.”

“Yeah! Not in front of the chi— I’m  _ not _ a child!”

 

Hongjoong lay in bed a moment longer after the call ended, floating between lost in thought and falling asleep again. His stomach rumbled, but it didn’t deter him further from the reaches of sleep. What did, though, was a knock at his door. A hoarse voice calling his name. He turned his head, blinked blearily as the door opened and San peered inside. The siren, in the soft light of the dimming laptop screen, looked bigger. Or at least, Hongjoong was noticing it. His head was further up, towards where the the door frame topped off. He hadn’t realized it before; maybe the siren had always just seemed bigger to him.

“Hongjoong?” The siren’s voice was soft, like he thought the other was asleep. There was hesitance in his step, as if he was adjusting to his own size in the small space. “Are you sleeping?”

“No,” came his reply. He rolled over on his side, patted the bed in front of him.

The siren glanced down at where Hongjoong patted the bed before complying with the gestured request. The bed dipped, groaned under the new weight as San lay down on his side. 

“What’s up?”

“Why did you...introduce me in such a way? Did you not say you wanted the world to know of me?” The siren frowned, looked down at the space between them. “Are you...concerned about something?”

There was a lot Hongjoong was concerned about. He pressed his lips into a thin line. There was more than just introducing San that he had problems with. He licked his lips, thought of how best to word this. While the siren was docile now, there was no telling when a switch would flip and he’d find himself wishing he’d been more careful. He feigned wriggling around to get comfortable to put some space between them, hoped the other wouldn’t notice.

“I…” He wanted to protect them. Not just himself. Sirens were spiteful, vindictive; it would be within the siren’s nature to track down his friends regardless of the means he needed. And knowing the other was a witch — had been in a previous life — he figured those means might make the task easier. Again, his tongue darted over his lips, as if tasting the atmosphere that had suddenly grown heavy. “I just want to be safe.”

It was as close to the truth as he could get without saying the words he actually meant. “Have you not felt safe with me?”

“No.” He answered before he could stop himself. He screwed his eyes shut, waiting.

When nothing happened, he opened his eyes slowly. San lay across from him, expression pinched. His brows furrowed and lips pursed, he stared back at Hongjoong with wide eyes. “I apologize greatly.”

Unexpected, was one word for it. 

“It’s--it’s okay? You can’t really help it.” Hongjoong lifted a shoulder in a noncommital shrug. 

“No, it is not. This...is your home, now. And I do not make you feel safe in it.” This might have been what he was like, before. At least, that was what Hongjoong thought. Considerate, kind. Or he could have been a murderer. The reminder of his dream (or memory; he still wasn’t certain) was a heavy one.

His story was how he told it. The reality of the situation, of what had happened for them to be where they are now, was subjective without physical records. It was all from  _ him _ . Hongjoong wasn’t so sure he could trust in a singular perspective. The same way he had not been able to fully trust the records given to him. He could only hope that it lead him to a conclusion that ended with him right, and still breathing.

“San...there’s—” He stopped, trying to order his words. He let his eyes slide shut while he thought, opened them when he was sure. “San, you have to control yourself.”

The siren nodded, watching him in a way that wasn’t far off from a shameful pup. No wonder that was what Meldive had called him. “I can — I can try. Hongjoong, I can try if that makes it better.”  _ Eager. _

“And.” Another breath, steeling himself. “Did you leave something out? At the bar, when you were talking about your life?”

The siren froze. Hongjoong watched his frame tense, muscles taut as the siren surveyed his face. Had he? Or had it all been a lie?

“I wanted...to spare you of the terrible things that happened.”

“That you did?” It might have sounded more accusatory than he’d wanted. 

San recoiled, as if he’d been struck. “I made. I did not— I made choices and involved myself in matters I had no business getting involved in. Matters of the heart are always the most deadly.” A small, rueful smile revealed a sliver of teeth. “My choice...it killed someone I loved dearly.”

“So.” Another attempt at tact. “You didn’t kill anyone?”

“Yes? No?”

Hongjoong groaned, turned over. It probably wasn’t a good idea to have his back to the siren, but his head hurt as he tried to process the little information he had. His wanting to justify what he knew with what he thought he knew was like a dog chasing its tail. He’d never reach any sort of conclusion. He felt the bed protest movement and glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide. The siren had scooted closer, but stopped when he’d been spotted.

“I think...the best way to describe this is that the deaths were a result of my actions?” San sat cross-legged on the bed.  _ Big. _ Hongjoong was noticing that a lot more now, with him so close. “If I had not made those choices...people would still be alive.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

San didn’t look up. “I do not know if I ever will be able to tell  _ anyone. _ ”

Was he crying? The siren ducked his head down, hair falling into his face. He’d let the strands stay long when he’d cut them, and now Hongjoong was cursing that aspect of the stylistic choice.

“A-about your self control.” A change of topic was needed. Desperately. He might suffocate under the weight of the tension. “I’m just concerned you might...bite someone. I know that you could do worse things with your hands, but you’ve got a gnarly set of teeth.”

San nodded. Or as best he could.

“We have to find a way to cover your mouth.” He swallowed, an idea already in mind. But he doubted the other would like it much. He expected vitriol. But — San had done a number of things he didn’t expect. His unpredictability made anticipation for the worst easy. “With that muzzle.”

The siren peered at the human, considering. Hongjoong waited for the tensing of musculature before the pounce of an attack. Instead, he got another nod. “That might...be best.”

“It’s not— it’s not a punishment!” Hongjoong felt he might have kicked a puppy with the expression the siren was giving him now. “It’s just a precaution for both you and I. If we have something like last night again — when they shot you — it’ll be because I couldn’t have done anything.”

He stopped himself. It was an awful lot like he was talking of a future with the two of them together. His cheeks heated in the dark room, the laptop screen gone dark. All he had was the light of the night outside the glass window to illuminate the planes of the siren’s face. The curve of his jaw and the light of his eyes. They were a murky color — brown, maybe black? It was hard to tell — reflecting the current turmoil they faced.

“I meant — I meant that I want to avoid that.” The siren watched him patiently, nodded. “So, we need to take steps to keep you from — from trying to kill or eat someone.” He winced at that, but the other didn’t seem perturbed by his words usage.

“I understand.” The acquiescence was quick.

Hongjoong blinked. His mouth opened and closed for a minute. He had expected just a little more discussion. Maybe that the other would tease him, latch onto his own nervousness with the proposition. Quiet settled in between them comfortably, and Hongjoong felt like he had to laugh at himself. Which, he did. Sorta. A nervous chuckle as he rolled off the bed and scampered out of the room.

Soft footfalls were the only indication that the siren was following, not far behind him. His body buzzed with nervous energy as he went to retrieve the muzzle that he’d gotten from the pawnshop. He swallowed, gripped it a little harder than he might have needed to. He’d noticed the prongs sticking out of them before, into where the mouth would be. But he didn’t know what it meant.

San hovered behind him, reaching over him to thumb at the prongs. His voice was small when he spoke. “It was called a witch’s bridle.”

“What?” Hongjoong tried to make himself smaller, to slow the hammering of his heart in his chest.

“This.” He took it gingerly from Hongjoong’s hands. “A witch’s bridle. They made me wear one for my trial. Dare I say...this might be the same one.”

“Wh— was it because of what the pawnshop lady said?”

“Well, yes, and no. When she said… ‘mouthy’. It was meant to mean that they did not want us cursing them or casting spells. Speaking with your mouth held in the same position is difficult. Harder when there’s something in it.”

“ _ Oh. _ ”

“We were condemned before people ever knew the truth. It was usually only removed for a testimony or a verse test. The priest would have us recite scripture or the Lord’s prayer, and if we could not...we were confidants of the devil.”

Hongjoong wasn’t seeing the correlation. San had admitted, loosely, that he had not been able to read. Recitation would have meant he’d have to know it by heart, and only from those around him. Being a word off would be the fault of the person he learned it from. Brows furrowed, he looked back down at the bridle.

“We have to get rid of those, then.”

There was no hesitation from the siren, just another moment of passing his finger over the prongs before he snapped them off with ease. The only sentimental value they had had been damning. He tossed the pieces over his shoulder, forgotten as he handed the bridle back to Hongjoong. “You put it on me.”

“A-are you sure? That won’t...make you uncomfortable?”

San shook his head. “No.”

The silence that filled the room was borderline unpleasant. Only moments before, Hongjoong had feared being in such close proximity. And now he’d be even closer, putting a muzzle on him. The two regarded one another, San giving him another nod as if to assure him. He bent at the knees to make it easier for Hongjoong to trust him and his breath caught in his throat.

The look of absolute trust being sent his way was too open, too pure. He didn’t know how to take that. It made his knees knock together as he took a step forward. His fingers trembled around the bridle and he froze when San’s hands wrapped around his own. They guided him in the process of placing it on his face, gaze never leaving him. 

His fingers fumbled with the buckle, the metal slipping through his fingers more than once. He took a breath to steady himself, careful of his touch on the siren. They’d gone a long way from a surprise hug. At least the other wasn’t lunging at his throat this time. When the buckle was secured, he stepped back and stuffed his hands under his armpits, curling his fingers to keep the tingling at bay. The siren regarded him quietly.

“You can — you can talk like that, right?” He grimaced at the sight before him.

From his jaw to over his nose, the muzzle settled. The teeth plating looked more decorative than anything, but Hongjoong had come to understand that had been to hide the portion that really mattered. The siren’s chin was held in a loose embrace by the leather. The whole contraption looked noticeably newer, as if the years had been wiped away from it. “I can now, yes.”

Hongjoong nodded. He, theoretically, had not wanted for it to come to this. If it could have been avoided, he would have found a way to do it. But they weren’t faced with many options.

“San, what if you went back to the river? Do you think you’re healed enough for that?”

The siren blinked — the same triplicate that Hongjoong was becoming used to seeing. “I believe so.”

“Then, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

 

He watched the siren‘s fin cut through the water soundlessly. The morning had met them in the same way; quiet, with just the river rambling on outside the cabin. Seeing the watering hole now, with the light of midday streaming over it, made it seem as magical as when Hongjoong had first seen it. The water reflected the sun back at him, somewhat blinding if not for the patches of shade from the trees dipping low. The rickety dock held him up high enough that he wasn’t submerged in the water, but the water lapped up toward his knee with his legs in.

Hongjoong should probably be terrified to have let the siren back into his natural habitat. That he allowed  _ himself _ to be this close to the water. But, with their conversation the night before, he could not work up the same fear he had before. Not in the same way, at least. Each time the siren drew closer to him in the water, he was reminded of their encounter with Meldive. The way he’d held his own against a siren that was supposedly older than him.

It did not help that Hongjoong was now positive San had grown in size.

He commanded a need for more space that made the human’s heart pick up pace. San’s head broke the surface of the water, peering up at the human a moment. Hongjoong stared back. They’d been soaking in the quiet, relishing in the calm. San had been quick to strip himself of the clothing they’d gotten. So fast, Hongjoong might have just blinked before the siren was in the water. Watched as his tail arched in the water as he dove down, splashing as he went.

A playfulness had settled in; no wonder Meldive had called him puppy. He seemed a lot like one. A puppy with large teeth and a penchant for eating anything in sight. San’s attention shifting from him to a hovering figure, to which Hongjoong followed his gaze.  A vulture flew above them, looming large. 

There was something in the way it dipped low. Teasing, provoking. He wondered if there was anything n the relationship between the animals here the way there was with the terrain to the siren. If there was, it seemed to be continuous testing of where they settled in the food chain. He watched as the bird dipped lower still, even more teasing. Skirting too low. The calculation on the siren’s face was frightening. 

Easy was the coil of the siren’s tail. The water churned as it moved, but it went unnoticed. They’d danced together in a circular pattern, San snapping his jaws shut whenever he thought the bird had dipped too close. A warning. One not heeded. The bird gave a final flap as it veered to the left, but San was waiting. A wall of flesh and the sound of the impact were not friendly. San’s teeth closed around a wing and he fell back down into the water.

Hongjoong blinked and the bird had ceased moving. Either acceptance or death had claimed all struggle. The siren disappeared into the depths of the watering hole — that Hongjoong still was not sure of. It had to be deep enough to have kept his body when he died, and bigger still to accommodate him now. He swallowed, peering into the water as his legs stilled.

Around him was nothing but murky water, depths undefined. He wondered if San had lived like this, if he remembered only the negatives of his past life. Forver defined by the blackness of the water. Otherwise, what would fuel his animosity? A burning rage that could not be sated. Lips pursed, he watched as his reflection in the water was encompassed by San’s face. The siren rose up, putting himself in the space between Hongjoong’s legs.  _ Close. _

They’d already had a mild,  _ maybe _ discussion about space — and yet. San slipped between the underside of his legs to rest on the docks. Arms folded, he rested his head on them to stare at the human.

“What are you thinking of?” 

Hongjoong started, broken from the trance of watching the way the light reflecting off the molten gold of the siren’s eyes. “The water.”

“What of it?” San’s brows rose, head lifting slightly from atop his arms.

“Just...it.”

“Just it?”

“Like — the night you healed my arm.” He’d wanted to ask for a long time. Even with knowing what he knew, Hongjoong still didn’t fully  _ know _ . And that was killing him. “Was it you or the water?”

“Both.”

“How?”

“We are made from water.” His shoulders rose with a shrug, as if it were the simplest thing to understand. 

Hongjoong frowned. “But  _ how _ did you heal me?”

The siren sighed, fell back into the water. Droplets splashed up, plopping into the fabric of his shorts. It was getting colder; he should start considering warmer clothes. He should consider the fact that San would need to leave soon. His mouth went dry and he swallowed around the lump in his throat. San floated in the water, gaze turned towards the heavens. “It simply did it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Words will not help you make sense of it.” The siren’s hands rested on his knees, nail scraping through fabric into skin. Hongjoong shuddered. “Get in.”

“I’m not wearing swimming trunks.”

“That has never stopped anyone before.” Another shrug, dismissive. “I have seen plenty of people dive in in the nude. The same as when I was human.”

“The water might be fine for you, but if there’s anything in there —”

“Hongjoong.” Soft, reassuring. Hongjoong didn’t like the way it made his stomach flip. The siren gave his knees a squeeze, eyes imploring. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

_ There’s you. _ He didn’t say it aloud. Instead, he sighed. He tried not to think fo the way his hands shook when he moved San’s own from his knees so he could stand. “Can you, like, give me some privacy?”

“Certainly.” 

Once San had turned around, swimming further away, Hongjoong hooked his fingers into the loops of his shorts. He hesitated a moment longer. A false sense of security could be exactly what San wanted. A siren’s whole thing was  _ luring. _ Faking comfort and safety when what waited was death. He wasn’t sure if sirens played the long game, if they’d wait as long as San had. 

His jaw clenched as he let his shorts drop, flung his shirt somewhere behind him and hoped it landed somewhere dry. His toes curled on the wood of the dock and he sucked in a breath. The only way to know what the siren meant would be to get in. And so he did.

The water was cold against his skin, forcing a yelp out of him as a shiver ran up his spine. San turned, a grin on his lips. His teeth gleamed in the sun. Dimples appeared with the force of his smile and his stomach churned again. Hongjoong’s legs kicked as he kept himself afloat. And, without the aid of a barrel of mead, he heard San laugh.

Not unlike the roll of water, the bubbling of a spring. Was he getting a little too poetic about it? Maybe. But it wasn’t something that he had expected, regardless of it being at his expense. 

“You remind me of a little duckling.” The siren had the gall to laugh in his face, and Hongjoong let him because, of course, he was that smitten.

Red-faced, he slapped the water before crossing his arms over his chest. “I can always just get out.”

“Stay, or you will not know what I meant.” He had a point.

“Then,  _ show me _ , and stop making fun of me.” Hongjoong slapped the water once more, earning him another giggle. He was tempted to it again just for the sound he got.

The siren grinned harder. “As you wish.”

Hongjoong was surprised to find that his feet reached the bottom. At least, as far out as he was. The siren pressed his shoulders down, a jolt going through him. Warning signs lit up in his mind with the gestures. This was it; this was the moment when San would drown him and then laugh at his corpse as it floated back up to the surface. But it never came. Instead, the hands slipped from his shoulders down his arms to his wrists, tugging him further out. His toes skimmed the waterbed, until they didn’t. He kicked, eyes wide as his footing left him.

“Relax; I have you.” There it was again. The gentleness in his voice. Hongjoong twisted his wrists in the siren’s hold until they latched onto the other’s, hanging onto him for dear life. They gone further into the watering hole. The shadow of the rock formation hung over them, a glow to the siren’s eyes. The siren stopped swimming, but tugged Hongjoong closer to him until they were almost skin to skin.

Hongjoong swallowed, arrested in the gaze of the siren for a moment. “Is this...where you were tossed in?”

San nodded, said nothing. He slipped beneath the surface of the water, pulling Hongjoong with him. The human’s heart pumped in overtime, a flight response taking hold of him as he attempted to keep his head up for as long as he could. His eyes shut as his nose breached the water. He attempted to shake the other off him, but the grip on him was tight, steady. His chest tightened, a fist closing around his heart as his eyes opened. The second ticked on and holding his breath was becoming harder as they went.

He expected to see a bubble of his own breath leaving him when he opened his eyes. His mouth followed suit, unable to hold in the oxygen he so desperately needed. But water did not rush in as he did so. He blinked, mind slow to catch up. A thin layer of something engulfed his head. With his eyes open, he could see the siren watching him expectantly and he opened his mouth again to suck in an experimental breath. 

The water stayed outside of his body and he could breathe easy. He blinked again. Eyes wide, he felt the siren let him go. As he had been assured, he was fine. Save for sinking because he wasn’t making any moves to swim. He had never been much of a swimmer, but now he was thanking his mother for having enrolled him in those swimming lessons as a kid.

Around him, it felt like a warm embrace. A parent welcoming a child home. His heart stuttered, warmth flooding him. Comfortable and easy, was being in the water. It was clearer than when he had looked in from above. As magical as it was on the surface, so was it in its depths. Fish populated the water in mass. Weeds reached up for the sun from the lower depths, masses that swayed with the minimal current. An entire ecosystem existed with the water, with San as its head.

A school of fish broke apart as the siren swam through them, circling Hongjoong. Each turn was fluid and his gaze remained the same. Waiting. Where rock created a barrier, Hongjoong caught the glimmer of metal. Silver. He glanced at San, considering. He swam forward, getting as close to the rock as he could. He held the rock wall like a guarding rail, pushing forward one hand at a time. Nestled in a small alcove, almost like a small shrine, were a collection of rings and necklaces. It seemed as though they, too, were protected from the water. Pristine, as if they’d only been dropped in the day before.

The water warmed behind him and he turned to see San. “Those were mine.”

“Did you put them there?” Hongjoong glanced back to the collection of jewelry.

“No.” The siren shook his head. “My mother did, I think. I never saw her do it. But I would return and there would be more added.”

His mother — the woman from the memory. The one that had pleaded with him not to look. “Did...she know what you became?”

“I know not what she knew. I just know that when she died, she gave herself to the water.”

His brow twitched and he turned away. In a sense, that was how it was supposed to be, right? That a child would watch their parent be buried, and not the other way around. How had that happened? How had San come to know? Was he here when it happened? Did he watch her corpse sink? He didn’t ask, jaw clenched. “I’m sorry.”

“There is no need. Her sadness ended when she did.”

“Did she become like you?” 

If she’d died here, then there was a chance — “No.” Firm, resounding. “She passed on, and it was final.”

Hongjoong swallowed, nodded. They should talk about something else. Something not concerning the death of someone San cared about. That seemed to happen a lot. “What did the rings mean?”

“They are power.” His smile returned as he thumbed at a necklace. Hongjoong wondered if there was an irony in it being a cross. “And wards from the Fair Folk. The colonies were rife with them in the early days; they migrated to avoid their own persecution as the humans did.”

Hongjoong’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Fair Folk?”

“Fae. Faeries. The Irish had a name I cannot pronounce for them.”

“But they’re real?”

San chuckled, brow raised. “Why would they not be?”

“Oh, God, that State Farm jingle makes sense now. They fucking  _ knew. _ ”

“I...am not certain I know what you’re talking about.” The siren cocked his head to the side, tucking the necklace back in place.

Hongjoong grinned, shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

San blinked — once this time — but shrugged a moment after. His fingers wrapped around Hongjoong’s wrist once more, pulling him further into the depths. The sun grew further away as the reeds blocked them out. Hongjoong thought that there surely must be some magic to the watering hole for how bottomless it felt. But then they did reach a point that might be called that, skirting the water bed as San lead him on.

At this depth, he wasn’t sure he would have made it without the aid of the water. He grimaced at the thought. Among the reeds, he spotted the remnants of a rope, caught and preserved, and looped around what looked like part of a skeleton. His gaze darted back to the siren, though he could only follow the lines of the white and grey underbelly as the water grew murkier. He watched the other drift upward, great tail propelling him forward easily. He wondered how much San must have slowed himself for the human to keep pace. Lips pursed, he worked his limbs that much harder.

The siren glanced back just as he disappeared into what looked like a hole in the rock wall. Hongjoong followed, hands pressing against the opening as he peered up. There was nothing but darkness. He swallowed, glanced back at the open water behind him before continuing. There was no going back now.

As he pushed himself upward, he found that there was light. Little dots of them lining the ceiling. A ceiling. He frowned and before he realized it himself, he broke the surface of the water. He gasped, sucked in a breath he didn’t need. Hongjoong blinked and wiped the water and hair away from his face.

“What is this place?” It felt like a tired line out of a movie, but even  _ he  _ could hear the wonder in it. And how breathless he was. He swallowed, wiped his face again like it all might disappear if he didn’t see it right.

“My home.” San’s echoed behind him, the siren gliding through the water half submerged. His fin stuck up before he turned on his back, gesturing for Hongjoong to come closer. 

Hongjoong swam to him, awestruck. “How’d you find it?”

“The river is how I come, but this is how I go.”

It struck him, then. This really  _ was _ what San had been like. That there were still remnants of the person he’d been. The question of his humanity was a complicated one. It revolved around the murkiness of his anger and spite, but there was indeed more to it. 

“And you just decided to show me.”

“Because I trust you.” He didn’t like the way he felt a swell at those words. “And would this not help with...what you are working on.”

Hongjoong’s brow rose. “My research?”

“Yes.”

He glanced around, chuckled incredulously. “This will do a shitload for my research, San.”

“I am glad.”

Hongjoong wasn’t sure he could think of the appropriate words to thank the siren. San’s cooperation would make everything flow smoother. Hongjoong could finally prove that sirens — San — existed. That it would open the door to further research of what laid hidden within the waters.

He felt a hand slide over his skin, careful. As if he was trying his best not to hurt the human. San’s eyes glowed, dim in the darkness but not unlike that of what came from the cavern ceiling. The siren angled his face towards, so that the two were staring at each other. San’s gaze drifted over Hongjoong’s face, the human’s heart stuttering in his chest.

“You are so beautiful when you are in awe, Hongjoong.” The siren let out a breath, brows furrowed. “May I kiss you?”

Hongjoong blinked. Once, twice. Sucked in a breath, then, “You’ve got my permission.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoy this monstrosity and all that is to come :)
> 
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